How safe is your child’s school?
In the second of our Back to School series, Gianina Schwanecke examines how schools prepare for emergencies and what happens when your child’s school goes into lockdown.
The alarm sounds intermittently for close to a minute. Teachers tell students to either remain inside or head indoors.
The senior leadership team has made contact with emergency services and is following their advice.
Teachers clear the toilets, hallways and rooms, checking for any students who have not yet been found. Exterior doors and windows are locked and the lights turned off. Students lie quietly face down on the floor away from the doors and windows and wait.
Though not typical, lockdowns as described here are increasingly part of schools response to incidents, explains emergency planning specialist Wade Harrison of Harrison Tew.
With nearly 20 years experience in the police, specialising in emergency management and security operations, Harrison established the company in 2010 as he felt there was a lack of support for schools during emergencies.
Now, he works with more than 650 schools and early childhood education centres to help them prepare emergency responses and crisis management plans for scenarios such as natural disasters, severe weather, custody disputes, a nearby police operation or even a swarm of bees.
Among the more concerning scenarios for parents are abductions, bomb threats or an active shooter. Images from frequent school shootings in the United States have permeated the New Zealand psyche and it is now the scenario most schools work to prepare for. “Most schools, unfortunately, are concerned about an active armed offender,” said Harrison.
While nobody can discount the worst occurring, Harrison emphasised the likelihood was “very, very low” but something schools could prepare for anyway.
“The most likely scenario is a police operation nearby. It’s something external to the school but as a precaution the school might follow a response for a short period.”
Emergency plans might include detailing how staff are made aware of an unfolding event, how they communicate it, what systems they have to put everyone in a “place of safety”, how they manage it and then they how they conclude and recover.
The Ministry of Education also provides guidance, including an emergency management plan template that schools populate themselves.
Despite lockdowns being more regularly reported on in the media – Queen Margaret College, Wellington Girls’ College and St Mary’s College went into lockdown at the request of police in December after a suspicious package was found at the US Embassy – Harrison doesn’t believe the risk is increasing; rather, schools are better equipped to respond.
Between November 2022 and October last year, police were contacted about 1371 priority 1 events at schools across the country. That’s close to 26 calls a week nationwide. Of these, they attended 1151 events. Most were coded as responding to an alarm (319), a person or car acting suspiciously (172), or a disorder event (139).
Seventy-eight were coded as a burglary, 75 related to a missing person, 65 as a family harm incident and 54 as wilful damage. There were 49 threat or intimidation events, 47 trespass events and 42 serious assaults.
Secondary Principals’ Council chairperson Kate Gainsford said all schools were required to prepare and practise emergency management.
“It’s kind of normal now. It’s better to be prepared and for it to not be necessary.”
The school Gainsford leads, Aotea College in Porirua, has had to lock down. In late 2022, it did just that after a digital threat, with students later escorted out by police after it was determined there was no risk. The school was in regular communication with families,and parents were praised for following the advice given by the school and their patience.
“Once upon a time we didn’t have to do lockdown drills or didn’t think about tsunamis or even recycling. All of these things are improvements,” Gainsford said.
Harrison said there was a time schools seemed unwilling to consider lockdowns, concerned about the stigma. Instead, they focused on evacuation.
Harrison said he believed it was better for schools to frontfoot communication during and after as the community was likely to find out anyway. “From a reputational side, it's not a reflection of the school at all. It's probably just a reflection of what’s occurring in the wider community.”
Schools can let parents know through usual student management systems, a text or an email indicating the school is following an emergency response. Regular updates should also be posted on the school’s website.
Harrison said the work started at the beginning of the year – checking contact details were correct, telling parents about how to contact them about a risk or where to receive updates.
He said parents should follow the advice of the school, even if they were asked to stay away. “Please respect that it’s for a reason. It’s not an indefinite response.”
So, how does an emergency response kick off? Often at the beginning of an incident, like a nearby police operation or a stranger being found on the grounds, it’s not clear what’s happening so it’s about identifying the safest place for everyone to be, Harrison explains.
“We look at a response in a worst case and sort of de-escalate from there.”
A lot of consideration is given to how each school is constructed and laid out. Sometimes “concealment” is best. “We will either move them out with an evacuation or... get everyone in or keep them inside.”
A key focus was making sure the response didn’t have more of an impact on the students than the incident itself, he said.
“We limit the responses that we need the students to find in so that minimises the impact or level of anxiety for them.”