School interior doors locked

[MonkeyDontTalk]

I want to be a teaching assistant and so I volunteered in a lovely primary school for the summer term to see if I liked it.

I have now enrolled on a teaching assistant course at college and part of the requirement for the course is to volunteer in a school. I arranged to go back into the same school this term.

I went in yesterday to find that over the summer holidays they have installed an electronic system which locks the internal doors, not only from the main reception into the school which is understandable but also the fire doors in the corridor.

The school is effectively a large rectangle, one main corridor in the middle and doors to the classrooms off this one main corridor. The hall is at one end and school reception is at the other. It is these corridor doors that are locked.

All staff members have a little electronic fob thing to allow them access through the doors. I however do not. Nor can I get one. So I am now meant to ask a staff member to let me through the doors. This can be for access to the toilets (which would be at least 2 sets of doors or more depending which class I am in.)

I can't even retrieve something from the printer. It seems I am more of a hindrance than a helpful now.

Does this seem safe? As in a health and safety issue that I am effectively locked in? Or good working practice? There are spare electronic fobs but they are for paid staff only.

Does any other school have this?

Surely they can give you a temp one. In case of fire, they automatically unlock once the alarm is raised, as far as I know.

Seems most schools are like this now!

I'd hope that the locks disable when the fire alarm goes off - but i know how you feel, I used to work in a school like this as a visiting music teacher, I used to get lots of huffing and eye rolling from the receptionist when she had to let me through the two doors to the music cupboard every week, but they wouldn't give me a key either (I was only there a couple of hours a week).
If you're there regularly I'd ask if there's any way you could sign for a temporary key each time you visit - are you fully DBS checked? If so it shouldn't really be an issue.

Yes I am full DBS checked, had to be for the summer term.

And yes the door automatically unlock for both fire alarms, play and lunch times.

It is the relying on someone to let me go through a door. I feel like I am 6 years old.

They have said no to giving me the fob thing. I feel like saying I'll pay for one, clearly it must be a cost thing. I am not the only volunteer but they come in on a Monday so haven't experienced this yet. One of them is quite forthright so maybe they will buy extra fobs

Cross posts Miaow.

It was just a keypad last term, so each exterior door was key padded but the staff did have the fob thing to unlock the doors from the playground to get back in. I used the number key code. So I can see why it was upgraded.

But I don't understand why they didn't order enough fobs for all staff and then the music teacher, volunteers etc.

I wouldn't expect a volunteer to have a fob but I wouldn't expect a volunteer to be moving throughout the building freely either.

I go to a number of schools like this. One of the issues that they have is visitors walking off with the fobs, absentmindedly. So it may be inconvenient, but it does keep children and equipment safer than having adults roaming freely. You may have to overcome your embarrassment and time your loo breaks appropriately.

We have this. The doors open when the fire alarm goes off. We don't get volunteers as such, but we don't give put key cards to anyone not employed by the school (e.g. youth workers who make regular visits).

The fobs are fiendishly expensive and experience shows that people tend to walk off with them.
We only give them out if you are an employee.

Thank you to everyone who responded. I think it comes down to cost for them. It is a fairly big school with a lot of volunteers who help the children to read etc.

Because it has only just been installed I don't think they have realised how much of an inconvenience it will be for staff to have to let us through doors.

Hopefully they will let the very regular visitors sign them out and back in again.

A lot of people seem to have come across schools like this - I never have! They've varied from the school where I was coming in as a volunteer without being DBS checked at all and having the run of the place, to my school now.

We have a door code to get in (through the reception area, so watched too), and door codes to get into the main building outside of school hours. It's a pretty rough school, but we've never had any issues with children being in the adult-only areas, or adults being in school who shouldn't be.

I guess it depends on the school layout, and I know some Jewish schools have extra security. But if they want volunteers, they shouldn't be stopping you going to the loo! The teachers surely have better things to do, too.

Surely it should either be:

You are fully DBS checked, allowed to roam freely and given a fob for the doors.

Don't have the full DBS check (done by that school) so therefore cannot roam freely in the school and can't be given a fob.

We have this at our school. Not even our Governors have fobs - they are £35 each! There are 2 'spare' fobs that are kept in the reception, but in practice they aren't very useful as we often have 5 or 6 volunteers in at a time. All teachers, TAs and Site Staff have one, plus one was issued to the PTA Chair and one to the Chair of Govs only. They are expected to escort the rest of their committee if they are in.

Classroom volunteers are expected to use the teacher/TAs one. It's not a great system but when we had our last Safeguarding inspection we were told 'too many' staff had them - they wanted the TAs to hand them back!

(We were all glad we had them though when 2 parents started fighting in the playground and one chased the other into the main hall - at least they were contained!)

Obviously everywhere is different, but our volunteers come to break and lunch. There's plenty of time to use the toilet then.

Its completely normal. I have in the past worked in school for a year without ever qualifying for key! and no toilet key either.

Not only are they expensive the company who supply ours will only sell then in packs of 10.
We only have two spare where I work.
The cost £38 each so we'd have to pay £380 in order to have any more.

I'm guessing those who the crazy prices are in small schools? Our secondary seems to have an unlimited supply and no bother if you've lost one etc (other than needing to alert them straight away to cancel the lost card's access)