Lockdown drills in Wales

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My husband and I are U.S. citizens, and we are fleeing the gun culture here. He has just accepted a position at Swansea University, and I’m attempting to wrap my head around the secondary school options in Wales. Our daughter is fourteen years old, and she’ll start school in Swansea next fall. I have a vague impression that the state secondary schools in Swansea are oversubscribed, so I haven’t been looking at them very hard; I’ve been putting more effort into what independent secondary schools have to offer us.

However, I was just trying to compile a list of state schools (so I don’t miss anything), and I saw that the Welsh government has recently issued directives for schools to implement lockdown drills—which is the chief manifestation of U.S. gun culture we’re trying to get away from.

My questions: Are all state schools in Swansea implementing lockdown drills? Are independent schools implementing them as well? If you live in Swansea and have personal experience with what’s really happening in this regard, I appreciate that you’re taking the time to reply. Thank you.

Ds’s school do lock down drills. As an example it was last used when a dad came to get his daughter and having never been to the school wondered around the wrong way. The school could see a man wandering the grounds so the school went into lockdown. It’s not just used for guns!! I like it.

My other sons school you can only get into the grounds via a buzzer with staff monitoring and you have to give your name, reason for being there etc. It’s a pain, but I like it also.

There was a report of a gun man in a small town in Cornwall England. The schools were put on lockdown within minutes. There must have been some plan in place. I found it quite reassuring as my DGC were in there.

This is the difference between the UK and the US.

The streets in the US are full of people with guns! If schools were shut down every time someone in the same town was known to be carrying a gun, no one would go to school!

It's so rare for someone to be in the streets

I teach on the border with Wales. We have a lockdown drill and procedure as part of our safeguarding. It’s mostly for any terrorism situation. It’s pretty standard these days. We don’t really have a gun culture at all in the UK despite this.

Swansea is lovely. You will have a great time here, fantastic beaches, national parks and friendly people. The weather is a bit crap though.

Our comp just outside Swansea has never had a lock down drill, maybe it’s a new thing. It is definitely not like the USA though.

There have been a couple of real lockdown situations in local schools. None were to do with guns. One was an ex student going into school grounds and making threats. One was a robbery with knife at a nearby shop and one was a random person behaving suspiciously outside the school.

I think most if not all schools in the UK have lockdown drills. It's the easiest way to teach a large mass of people what to do in an emergency and for future life / travel not necessarily just for whilst they are at school. Local schools near me had to implement their lock down drill before Christmas because a chemical tanker had spilt on a nearby road. The bell was used for a partial lockdown to get everyone indoors from PE and break and the windows and doors shut asap, then an email went out to staff just explaining the situation, that it was precautionary and to avoid exposure to any fumes, so it can be quite useful.

I've only ever heard of one school where I live having to operate a lockdown. It was because a parent who was not allowed contact to their child had threatened to abduct the child on that day and had arrived at the school grounds. The school went into lockdown until the police could deal with the incident.

I'm in Neath( adjacent to Swansea), never heard of such a thing but could imagine that sadly it may become the norm. Swansea schools you may have a chance of getting into a decent one - olchfa, bishopston and Gowerton have good reputations. My son is in dwr y felin neath and enjoying if that helps.

I'm Swansea born and bred and studied/taught at Swansea University for many years. It is a lovely, lovely place - the beaches, Mumbles, Gower, Joe's ice-cream....you will love it, I promise you! Olchfa is a great school. I'm now in Cardiff with a DS at secondary school and he's never, to my knowledge, had a lockdown drill. Gun crime simply never enters my head.

Another S Wales comp teacher who has never even heard of lockdown drills. Have had two full emergency evacs in 25 years though. They get practised termly.

Here in Cambridgeshire our secondary schools have a lockdown procedure, our particular school have had 2 alarms go off but this was down to faulty wiring, scared the kids but i was happy to know that there is something in place (just in case) some primary schools have them too but in primary it just means children are kept inside and will not be allowed home unless they are picked up by a parent or authorized adult

Schools in England now have to have a lockdown policy in place. My school has 2 - partial and full. Partial is no one to leave the building, but not hiding in rooms this is in place for things like dangerous dog on site. Full lockdown is hiding away from windows, blocking doors etc incase of an intruder.

Recently a local secondary and 2 primaries had partial lockdown at the end of the day (directed by the police) as there was a very unwell person walking around with a crossbow in the immediate vicinity- cue a parent on the local paper's FB saying that if she found out her DD's school had a lockdown policy she would remove her as no one is stopping her collecting her DD (this was answered by numerous people saying that by doing this the police/school were ensuring her DD's safety and it was not kidnapping)

I am a governor at a primary school. We have a lockdown policy but it isn't on our website because we wouldn't want it to be read by someone who might want to work out how to get round it.

We did do a very low-key lock down drill (in our case, "if there was a lorry fire on the motorway and we needed to keep you children out of the way because the emergency services might want to get to the site through our playground") and it was very useful for revealing, for example, that the teachers could only lock their classroom doors from the outside...

I've worked in six schools in various parts of England (north and south). The closest I've come is my year 10 class wanted to do an earthquake drill when we were learning about earthquakes. I come from a place where earthquakes are not uncommon and had been showing totem footage of earthquakes I had been in and describing my own experience of them to try and act as an aide memoire.

No lockdown drills. Security in schools that I've seen consists of cctv, key pads or swipe access to external doors, school gates. Maybe the odd grumpy groundskeeper. Staff are told to challenge anyone on site not wearing visitor or staff badges. People who don't belong on a school site are likely to um and aw, so I would then escort them off the grounds or to reception where I could get reinforcements.

And yeah, I feel ya with having 'two armed' mall cops on school grounds - just talk to the highly trained swat team members who have been injured/ killed in us school shootings. And a teacher with a gun could have totally stopped everything - what with their three day training course!!!

Sorry, but the us is a bit of a joke with their gun lunacy!!