As schools return at the beginning of the academic year, many Headteachers and Governors will undoubtedly be reflecting on site security following the tragic events in Southport over the summer when 3 children were killed when attending a holiday dance workshop, held at a community venue.
The DfE, in what many may view as coincidental, updated its guidance on School security on 12 July 2024, just days before these fatal attacks. It now therefore seems appropriate to review all school security measures in light of these tragic events and the updated guidance.
It is imperative that all schools have a policy and plan in place to manage and respond to security related incidents. The security policy should complement the school’s safeguarding policy, particularly where it puts in place measures to protect pupils and address the threat of serious violence and should form part of a suite policies to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of pupils and staff.
It is however important that a common sense and proportionate approach is taken to identify, assess and keep under review health and safety related risks and take steps to reduce or eliminate those risks; this includes security risks where there is a threat of attack on pupils or staff from within or outside the school.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, as amended, provide that employers must appoint one or more competent persons to oversee workplace health and safety and to support compliance with regulations.
Schools are required to have “Competent persons” who should consider matters of security, including areas regularly used for off-site education and those related to the educational visits policy. They should put in place a security policy that:
- identifies the likelihood of a security related incident occurring
- assesses the level of impact
- develops plans and procedures to manage and respond to any threats
as well as ensuring that business continuity plans are in place to enable staff and pupils to react appropriately and promptly to any serious incident; this should include arrangements to respond to short, medium and long term issues as well as the immediate crisis.
It is advised that your security policy should:
- reflect the balance between maintaining an open and welcoming environment for learners, parents and the wider community and protecting them from harm
- help create a culture in which staff and pupils recognise and understand the need to be more vigilant about their own and the safety and security of others
- demonstrate an understanding of the issues that could impact on your school and wider community.
Plans and supporting procedures should:
- be based on a realistic assessment of the threats relevant to your school or college
- demonstrate that there is a shared and common understanding about how to respond to identified threats
- be very clear about what is expected from the staff, pupils and the local community should an incident occur
- draw on experience and expertise provided by your local authority, academy trust, police and others, such as local resilience forums.
In a rapidly changing world where security threats are becoming more prevalent and diverse, it is essential that schools consider and routinely review their security arrangements, policies and plans.
All schools should be familiar with and understand how to undertake a health and safety survey and risk assessment.
Templates are checklists are available here which can assist all schools with the following:
- emergency planning
- risk assessment
- business continuity planning
- evacuation
- bomb alert or threat
- lockdown
- post incident support
- debrief and lessons learned.
There are also specialist companies that can support schools to put a tailored risk assessment in place. Please contact us if you require contact information.
Protection of the school premises against a potential criminal, terrorist and other unlawful action, however unlikely it may seem, is an important issue. Schools should consider how both local and national security issues may impact on their day-to-day business and the safety and security of staff and pupils. In addition to what many would describe as routine incidents involving abusive or threatening individuals or acts of on-site vandalism consideration should be given to the likelihood of more serious incidents such as one involving a pupil with an offensive weapon, a serious cybersecurity attack (we are routinely now seeing these amongst our school clients) or a physical attack on school premises.
Not all security issues are malicious but still need to be appropriately addressed – we are sometimes asked to advise schools where an individual has unauthorised access to the school site, for example, unauthorised access to the school field.
However, any measures put in place should be proportionate to the type of threat assessed alongside the likelihood of it occurring and the impact that it would have on the school.
It is important to remember that not all security incidents are triggered by outside factors, e.g. an argument escalating in a classroom. Therefore, schools are advised to adopt a whole school approach and put in place preventative measures which will help avoid the risk of negative behaviour quickly and unexpectedly escalating to a more serious incident.
Effective behaviour management strategies can help to reduce the likelihood of such escalation occurring. Alongside the development of robust behaviour management policies it is important you acknowledge that serious incidents, whilst rare, do occur. Lessons learned from dealing with such incidents have identified that young people should know how to share information in their possession about the possibility of a serious incident occurring and they should be actively supported so they feel safe to do so.
It is widely understood that anonymous reporting can help to support a culture where young people can be encouraged and, without fear of recrimination, feel safe to leave information about issues of concern for adults to pick up and take action on. This does happen in practice and we have advised on cases where it is other pupils who have disclosed to teachers that a peer has an offensive weapon in their possession. In circumstances where effective information sharing arrangements are used, prompt action to risk assess the likelihood of a related incident occurring and timely action to intervene, may help to avert a serious incident.
If this had happened in an incident involving the stabbing of a teacher, Anne Maguire, in Leeds in 2014, there might have been a very different outcome. A subsequent inquest questioned why Will Cornick’s peers, the pupil who stabbed the teacher, had not reported that he planned to kill Maguire, nor said anything when he brought a knife to school. It returned a verdict of unlawful killing, and found that opportunities to prevent her murder were missed. There was evidence that he had sent a Facebook message to a friend in which he talked about “brutally murdering” Maguire, and told 10 other pupils of his intention.
Finally, it is advised that plans should cover procedures for incidents occurring during normal school hours and out of hours, including weekends and holidays. Emergency procedures for extended services that take place on school premises; e.g. after school care and sporting activities operated by an outside provider should also be included.
All staff should know what to do to protect themselves and pupils from harm, safeguard the estate and be able to determine when it is appropriate to contact the police and other emergency services.
For assistance with all your site security policies and procedures, together with any security issues please contact our team of specialist lawyers at schoolsupport@wslaw.co.uk or on 0345 070 7437.