Dear Parents/Carers,
Our school is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all our pupils and our priority is to keep the children safe at all times. I am writing to remind you about our Lockdown emergency procedures, we have in place, should our school ever need to go into ‘Lockdown’. A school lockdown is the opposite of an evacuation. In a ‘lockdown’ children and staff remain inside the building for their safety.
It is standard health and safety practice for schools to have lockdown procedures in place as it is good practice for schools to prepare for all situations regardless of how unlikely their occurrence may seem.
As you may know, there have been a couple of local incidents, in previous years where we have had to initiate the partial lockdown procedure, in real life circumstances so staff and children are familiar with lockdown procedures and we always inform the whole school community after the event.
Please read a brief summary below.
| Lockdown Procedures
Lockdown procedures should be seen as a sensible and proportionate response to any external or internal incident, which has the potential to pose a risk to staff and pupils in the school.
Lockdown procedures may be activated in response to any number of situations including:
- A reported incident / civil disturbance in the local community.
- An intruder on or outside the school site.
- A warning being received regarding a risk locally, of air pollution (smoke plume, gas cloud etc)
- The close proximity of a dangerous dog roaming loose.
There are two levels of lockdown : |
Partial lockdown (Amber) during which staff and pupils remain in the school building. School activities carry on as normal, however, entrances and exits to the school would be locked and monitored closely. All staff are aware and on alert to be vigilant. Younger children and parents would not be aware of the situation in this instance.
Full lockdown (Red) during which all staff and children would remain inside the building. Internal and external doors and windows would be locked and staff and pupils are to remain seated, quiet and out of view. Children would be fully aware of the situation in this instance and the school would follow instructions from the Emergency Services. Parents would be informed in this situation.
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The Lockdown procedure is available on the school website and all staff have been trained on the procedure. We will be refreshing our awareness of this procedure with staff and children in coming weeks and carrying out a practice exercise of a ’partial lockdown’. Primary Schools are not advised to complete ‘Full Lockdown’ drills due to the children’s age. We will talk to the children about this in assembly and in classrooms with class teachers in a sensitive manner. It is obviously not our intention to make any child feel anxious, however it is important that we have procedures in place and practice these to ensure everybody is clear on what they need to do.
Our school site is extremely secure and access is restricted, so we are almost operating on ‘partial lockdown’ as a normal everyday routine.
Please discuss this with your children and we will continue to update you on all important safety matters.
Yours sincerely,
T Larkham
Tom Larkham
Headteacher