School lockdown

[iphammer]

I have just seen a video on social media from the bbc with a classroom of primary school children going through the process of a lockdown in an event of a terrorist attack. The school has an alert system “we are in lockdown” sounds when something bad is happening.

WTF is going on are we heading for a terrorist attract ?

I have a 7 year old and a 1.5 year old. My 7 year old is starting year 3 in just over a weeks time I’m starting to worry thinking what do the schools / government know that we as parents don't.

starting to think about taking him out of school and homeschooling him instead.

Describe your lockdown drills!

Were you kept behind a few years as the Run Hide Tell was only introduced in 2015.

Fire drill was a good skive, it was not stressful.

Have you ever actually done a lockdown drill with a bunch of kids?

Or are you just making up what they're like in your head and presenting it as fact?

Run hide tell was 2017, not 2015, why would that be related to my own schools have lockdown drills?

Just closed the blinds, shut the door and sit on the floor, just like any lockdown drill, or if you’re doing PE go to the changing rooms, if you’re in the toilet stay there. How on earth is any of that stressful?

My son is 19 and he did them in primary school 10 years ago.

Do you object to fire drills? Lockdown drills aren’t for terrorist attacks per se. One school a montj in the UK goes through a lockdown because somebody unsavoury turns up at a school and police needs to deal with them. By unsavoury I mean parent or ex student with a weapon sort of thing, not an asylum seeker. They don’t tell the kids it’s for terrorism reasons btw- my son went to a primary school in a residential area and they used not wanting to scare an escaped pet from a nearby house as the story. In reality there are lots of reasons they might need to practice this eg a local school had an accident in the science lab, we also have a prison and some factories within a 5 mile radius (one of the factories had a fire a couple of years ago)…

Yes, we did them at my school in the 80's too. The Run, Hide, Tell campaign was introduced much later, but some schools still chose to do emergency lockdown drills prior to that.
I think it's probably best not to use Tik Tok as a reliable information source.

That is not what happens. Kids in , windows/doors shut or locked , blinds down. The kids sit quietly on the carpet while the teacher reads them a story, or go under the desks. The main instruction is to keep quiet. Nothing about hiding from an attacker.

At least this is unlikely to happen in the UK 😂
(screenshot incoming)

“What so we do as a society to rectify this and stop young people being so anxious?”

I dunno, maybe stop pedalling nonsense as fact? Multiple posters on here are telling you how these drills are managed. Why are you disregarding their lived experience?

I really do think there’s a campaign to spread fear with threads like this and I cannot for the life of me understand why Mumsnet lets them stand (of course I do, ad revenue). If we’re not careful there’s a real risk in this country we’ll end up going down the same path as the USA.

I’m 10 years older and we evacuated a handful of times because somebody called in an IRA bomb. Luckily they were hoaxes and I understand that lockdown is the opposite of evacuation and you stay inside the building.

Its been 16 years since I left teaching and the lockdown procedure was sadly a reasonably regular occurrence due to a gang issue in the area.

Firstly to those that are saying I created a thread before about lockdowns you are wrong.

secondly what misinformation are you talking about BIWI ? Are you saying I’m lying ?

thirdly the reason I created this thread was to make people aware and to find out if anyone knew the reasons why a school would practice for a lockdown I assumed this was a new thing but reading through the comments it seems like everyone on this thread kids school practice for lockdowns. The school my son goes to doesn’t do this however after seeing this video on social media I’m assuming this is going to start happening at he’s school in the new school year.

BTW my son doesn’t go to a small village school he’s in a school that has minimum 30 kids to one class with around 16 classrooms in the school. So it’s not like it’s a small school. There is also another primary school 1 mile down the road and the same with that school no lockdown. I have nieces going to a city centre school in Scotland it’s the same there no lockdown.

Once again, OP - the video circulating on social media is from 2017. There is no new threat/information which would cause your child’s school to change its current practice.

thirdly the reason I created this thread was to make people aware and to find out if anyone knew the reasons why a school would practice for a lockdown

Are you aware that your OP contains 3 things that exactly match what is being said on Tommy Robinson twitter?

1. Are we headed for a terrorist attack on schools (this is the fear being whipped up with the claim that migrants are planning a terrorist attack on schools)

2. What do schools know that parents don't that they are suddenly putting these drills in place?? (to back up the assertion that there is a planned terrorist attack and schools/government are responding to specific intel. Except these drills have been going on for years and are totally non-news)

3. the suggestion to take children out of school as a response and to homeschool them. This is exactly the advice being spread on far right twitter.

Maybe you need to look at what the algorithm is presenting you with because it appears to be coming from racists but you are unaware?

You have no idea what’s going on in other schools so shut up. Lockdown’s are not new and you’re spreading conspiracy bollocks

The majority of comments on this post are from parents who already know about these lockdowns and there kids go to a school where this happens quite a bit this is something I never knew up until now.

so what makes you think this thread is about fear spreading ?

@iphammer how do you actually know your child's school doesn't have lockdown drills?
Everyone knows the answer a child gives to "what did you do in school today" is either "nothing" or "dunno".
The drills could have taken place and he's just never told you.

Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.

Maybe because of the set up of the school they consider they don’t need one.

Maybe they’re behind on their procedures.

Maybe they’re calling it something else, some schools give it a game name, for example “sleeping lions”.

Maybe you could’ve just googled. It’s not a blooming secret.

Because, as I posted in detail, there were three things in your OP that match exactly what is being said on racist twitter where they are spreading fear about a terrorist attack on primary schools by migrants.

@iphammer Because an almost identical thread was started a few weeks ago, citing the same alt-right points of incitement, and your faux naivety isn’t fooling anyone. I knew these drills happened before I had kids. Might I suggest instead of spending your time on TikTok, you find out what’s going on in your children’s school? Perhaps if you were properly informed you wouldn’t feel such unnecessary anxiety.

A quick Google says that lockdown practices are not legally mandated but strongly advised by the D of E. So I'd be surprised if your sons school didn't do them. Just talk to the school if you are worried.