In a recent article, established journalist Nick Duerden details a personal account of new mass shooting training at his daughter’s school, which makes for an interesting read. It highlights that violence in schools is on the rise and assaults in schools have risen by 72% in the past four years - as it becomes a necessity for schools to be able to keep staff and pupils out of harms way quickly and safely, through “lockdown”.
But it perpetuates the commonly held, but erroneous perception, that any school implementing a lockdown procedure is “preparing for a mass shooting". The author of this article may have grabbed people’s attention, but they are wrong.
To read the full article, please click here.
All the schools we work with are not preparing for a mass shooting, which is extremely unlikely in an un-armed society like ours. They are taking sensible and proportionate steps to instil in staff and pupils simple steps to be followed that will keep them away from any number of things that could directly or indirectly harm them; - ranging from an XL Bully, gas cloud, distressed individual or ultimately a potentially armed individual.
The key thing is that whatever the threat is, which is largely immaterial, the aim is to get three barriers between it and pupils as fast as possible. To be effective the instructions given must be simple: - get inside the campus, go inside a building, go inside a classroom.
We describe this process as “shelter-in” as it is less emotive and more accurately articulates what is expected. It also clarifies that for most schools locking down every building, in a short and rapid time frame, is a near impossible task.
Training and support offered by AI Schools
At AI Schools, we fully support SLTs in Critical incident training and Crisis Simulation for their schools, ensuring staff are able to handle the psychological demands in a crisis scenario.
With our Crisis Simulation we provide immersive 90 minute crisis simulations, afterwards our supportive team provides a structured debrief looking at how well the group and key individuals coped with information overload, so schools would be able to effectively deal with a real situation in the future.
Our Critical incident training is a fully interactive 2 hour session, delivered by an ex-police critical incident commander, who will explain how to approach and manage the unexpected.
In addition, we run briefing sessions on lockdowns and training for front-of-school staff on dealing with telephone bomb threats, aggressive and/or distressed visitors, and managing phones and communications in a crisis.
Schools that have previously undergone our crisis training have described it as “outstanding” and extremely worthwhile for full peace of mind.
If you require Crisis Incident Training or Critical Simulation training for your school, contact our dedicated team on 01983 564 917 or email enquiries@aischools.co.uk
