Matrix Academy Trust, which runs a number of schools in the Black Country, has changed its approach to school lockdowns working with West Midlands Police.
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00:00So I'm Joe Phillips and I'm the head teacher at Wensfield Academy.
00:04So we had an intruder arrive just outside our reception area
00:10and we had to put the school into a lockdown.
00:16The term that we were using at the time is in order to safeguard our pupils.
00:22It was something which we'd practised before
00:25where the pupils followed a procedure in order to keep themselves safe
00:31with the guidance of the staff.
00:34We were incredibly proud of our pupils and how they responded to it
00:38in order to keep themselves and others safe.
00:41And we were also very appreciative of the school community,
00:45both parents and further afield,
00:48in the support that they showed for the school
00:51and how they helped us afterwards.
00:54I think in the case of Wensfield, due to the seriousness of the incident,
01:00it meant that we had to go straight into what we termed then as lockdown.
01:05However, if we had an intruder that we weren't sure
01:10whether they were being threatening or similar sorts of behaviour,
01:15we could have maybe taken precautionary measures
01:18where we didn't have to put the whole school into a lockdown,
01:21which was the right thing to do for us,
01:23but it might have been overreaction
01:26should it not have been an intruder,
01:29but some misinterpreted information.
01:32So I think it's really, really important that there is a graduated response
01:36where teachers and staff can assess
01:40and then maybe take precautionary measures,
01:42whether that's just locking the outside of the building
01:45without having pupils to change what they're doing in the classroom
01:49while the situation is assessed.
01:51But as I said, what happened at Wensfield,
01:54we would have still taken the same action now,
01:56but I think it's really important to adapt the approach
01:59so it's not just a simple on-off.
02:02There needs to be a spectrum of the measures that you take.
02:07As a parent of two myself,
02:09I understand that if I was told that my child's school had gone into a lockdown,
02:14that would cause me understandable concern.
02:18And if it was a case that that wasn't needed
02:22or the situation was assessed
02:24and then it didn't have to go to that more extreme measure,
02:28then I think that that would help reassure parents.
02:32There's always going to be a time and a place
02:34to take the most serious of precautionary measures,
02:36but if that can be avoided,
02:38I think that is the right thing to do for the pupils and the parents safe.
02:42My name's Phil Dalby.
02:43I'm a Chief Superintendent in Westminster Police.
02:45I'm the Borough Commander for Policing in Walsall.
02:48One of the roles we have in policing is dealing with risk
02:51and dealing with uncertain incidents and emergencies and criticality.
02:56After a significant incident happened in one of the schools in the borough
02:59and I then worked with them afterwards
03:01about how I thought their response could be smarter
03:04and some of the things and the models and tools we have in policing
03:07and how that could be applied in school
03:09to help them make their decisions and keep people safe.
03:12The school really embraced that.
03:14That's kind of grown legs since then
03:16and now I think over 150 different members of staff
03:20from different schools across the borough have come in
03:22and heard one of the five sessions that we've done.
03:24So I do the inputs at the beginning about the things I'm recommending
03:28and then the school that's taken it on first
03:31delivers and shares all the things that they've done
03:34and then in a future session,
03:35once the schools have gone away and worked on it,
03:37they come back in and we just run through some scenarios gently together
03:40to see how's that model that you've developed for your school
03:43or a bunch of schools,
03:44working against what you've come up with
03:46if this happened and if that happened.