And Another Thing…

A sensible precaution is installing a barrier to stop children running into a road. This is a not unlikely thing to happen, so we do what we can to prevent it.

There are a hundred vanishingly unlikely things that we could imagine happening to children in a school. The fact that one or two have happened (Dunblane, Soham) doesn’t make these particular dreadful things more any more likely to happen than the other 98.

You yourself are not bothered about the small risk of a paedophile author coming into your children’s school, so you are happy to see the VBS go. Others are equally relaxed about the possibity of Dunblane every happening again.

The trouble is, there are plenty of people who are scared of something happening and each thinks prevention of their particular nightmare scenario is worth the inconvenience. When you add all these “reasonable” measures together, we begin to see the unintended consequences and the effect they have on children’s lives and wider society.

With your own children, you’ll no doubt want to be sure they never play in the street or go on a school coach trip or eat anything given to them by their friends. They should never use a mobile phone or ride a bike or learn to drive. All these activities carry far greater risk than another Dunblane. It’s only a small inconvenience to keep them safe.

My point is that we should protect against likely risks but we never know what the next one-off, such as Derek Bird, will be. It’s no use continually shutting stable doors each time a new horse bolts.

Do you really think these precautions would have prevented Dunblane?

The guy was crazy, and had this all planned. Think he couldn’t have planned a ruse to get into the school? Or chosen to attack at another opportunity, or in a different way?

I think the notion he was trying to convey is that schools are turning more into prisons, which isn’t nice for the kids;

if an armed-man with several guns wanted entry to a school, it’s not like you’ve got bulletproof glass on the doors, is it? Or if you have, are al the windows similarly outfitted?
Otherwise, all you’ve done is made a generation of kids grow up feeling like prisoners, so that if an armed nutter happens by, he has to threaten someone through the window to get them to open the door.
Or, you know, blow a hole in the door with one of his firearms.

In other words, you’ve deprived the freedoms of all in order to gain security from none. Much like the airports where an armed terrorist with a will could still happily gain access to and take down an airliner, but the plebs on the street have to queue for hours, can’t take on a can of cola and have to have their shoes inspected.

I am once again reminded of that overused yet still-great quotation of Benjamin Franklin;
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I’ve worked in a school that, for one reason or another, had none of the usual security precautions. There was a continual problem with burglary and trespassing. Once you are inside, schools are an easy target for theft thanks to the abundance of ICT and the way teachers have a habit of thinking of certain areas as automatically “off-limits” to kids and therefore secure. Trespassing was very often in the form of local youths (often ex-students) coming in looking to disrupt and intimidate.

At one of the tougher schools I worked at, fortunately one with the gates and obstructions to getting in, I still had two separate incidents where parents, having been given some nonsense story by their child came in looking for confrontation with me.

The efforts to stop unauthorised adults coming in seem perfectly sensible to me. Not because of a risk of paedophiles or spree killers, but because of the risks of laptop thieves, vandals and thugs.

I’ve worked in a school that, for one reason or another, had none of the usual security precautions. There was a continual problem with burglary and trespassing. Once you are inside, schools are an easy target for theft thanks to the abundance of ICT and the way teachers have a habit of thinking of certain areas as automatically “off-limits” to kids and therefore secure. Trespassing was very often in the form of local youths (often ex-students) coming in looking to disrupt and intimidate.

At one of the tougher schools I worked at, fortunately one with the gates and obstructions to getting in, I still had two separate incidents where parents, having been given some nonsense story by their child came in looking for confrontation with me.

The efforts to stop unauthorised adults coming in seem perfectly sensible to me. Not because of a risk of paedophiles or spree killers, but because of the risks of laptop thieves, vandals and thugs.

oldandrew – if that’s the reason for the security precautions, then I have *much* more sympathy for them than if they were a knee jerk reaction to one psycho.

You can dismiss this as it comes from someone who doesn’t understand just how special and precious your kids are but isn’t this just another “won’t someone think of the children” cry that has surely lost any credibility it ever had?

There must be some Godwin’s Law-type name for it?

It’s like in the US the ‘liberal’ parents all want severe gun control because guns in the house are a real danger to kids (and they are) but somehow never get round to wanting swimming pools banned even though they are several orders of magnitude more dangerous to children than guns. Funny that.

I was a student at a primary school not too far from Dunblane when the massacre took place, so suddenly doors were locked and visitors had to wear badges, as pupils it wasn’t stressful for us or a particular hassle, but we did feel safer, which is what mattered.

“I’m not going to enter the fray on that particular story”, why not just admit you were wrong then Tom?

These precautions are there to prevent a Dumblane? Do you honestly believe that? Are you that deluded?

As a typical Labour man you feel that ‘something must be done’ by the state, even in response to events that no state can prevent.

And this sums you up really:

“If it’s a bit inconvenient or bewildering for a journalist, why on earth would I care”

Why on earth would you care? Because I pay you to Tom, do you not understand that? I pay you to look at things like this, listent o people and think ‘Hmmm, what do the people want?’.

I couldn’t care less what you want, that isn’t why you were elected.

Anti-theft, I could see some sense in that; although the barbed-wire fences and outer defences are often intimidatory overkill that does nothing but scare kids and intimidate the less persistent thief.
As oldanddrew says, internal security is where it’s at; door locks that are card-key based so as to have a log of who opened what; having only all entrances and exits secured by keycard; you can give the kids these as well, helps with registration and leads to a generation who are familiar with decent security policies (as employed in virtually every office anywhere) and you can also tie them in with lunch-money systems so that those kids with disadvantaged parents aren’t shown up when it comes to paying etc.
What you DON’T need is ubiquitous CCTV on every corner, even in the toilets in a few occasions, requiring kids to submit a fingerprint for library books (a card will suffice; ties back to the entry/lunch card!), barbed-wire fences, spotlights, hell some of these schools look less like the Academia and more like Colditz!!

You expected to find something sensible in the Telegraph?

No doubt someone will eventually blame it all on the police state, nu-liebour, EU superstate yadda yadda yadda…

I think you are living in a dream world Tom, if you think you can prevent everything. If you want to improve security i would look at hospitals just as important as schools, then there are shops as youg children go in these. and what precautions are there when you take your lads for a hamburger.It never ends so just stop it all now.

“As oldanddrew says, internal security is where it’s at; door locks that are card-key based so as to have a log of who opened what; having only all entrances and exits secured by keycard; you can give the kids these as well”

Oh for pity’s sake.

Spoken like somebody who has never tried to clear 60 year 11s off of a corridor.

Key cards are so last decade. RFID implanted at birth is the way to go. You could probably get Tesco to sponsor it so they could do away with their loyalty cards.

Point taken; but obviously the cards (which would probably be an implementation of passive RFID) mean only certain doors will unlock for certain people;
Most doors will unlock for all cards, and getting year 11′s off a corridor is not made harder by the first one needing to open the door with card in hand…
Make the RFID transmitter in the doors strong enough, and as long as the little darlings don’t start putting their cards in insulated wallets, they won’t have to take them out to use them!

From a science point of view, implantable RFID is damned nifty. I’d have it done myself for the fun. But from a social/civil liberties point-of-view it’s horrific and I doubt even Labour would have advocated it. Well, not publicly at least.

Security is only as strong as the weakest link.

RFID/passes fail miserably as we have been taught that it’s not polite to allow a door to slam in someone’s face. Thus, timing your arrival at a secure door can allow you access as the person with access will hold the door for you.

Even if schools were perfectly safe from unauthorised adults, ignoring that children are a danger to other children, then do we rubberise the playground? Remove all sharp edges? What about the journey home? What about the teachers? Maybe we should have remote teaching so that no adult that isn’t a relation ever comes into contact with your precious little gene carrier.

But wait, children are more likely to be abused by family members, so maybe we should look at all adults with suspicion around children. Trust no-one, that’s the way to do it. More spying will help capture and weed out abusers as well as discourage some others. CCTV everywhere. And full computer and internet searches on anyone within 100yards of where a child might go.

Surely that’s not to far to go for ‘the children’?

These “precautions” make it incredibly difficult for a visitor to get into the school. Visitors such as journalists, local dignitaries (such as, hmm … maybe the local MP?), supply teachers, guest speakers, and prospective parents looking for an appropriate school for their children.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t think I’d be comfortable sending a child to a school I couldn’t inspect for myself, in much the same way that I wouldn’t take a job without seeing the working environment beforehand.

I completely agree with your comment. As a parent (albeit my children are grown up now) we do look after our children when we are with them so there should be no reason why we should not do this when they are with others. I always did and still do put my children’s saftey first. The Dunblane issue was a tragedy which should never be repeated and if this means high security, so be it.

“Most doors will unlock for all cards, and getting year 11’s off a corridor is not made harder by the first one needing to open the door with card in hand…”

Yes, it is.

Which I believe was my point.

That a journalist was able to get through the barriers he complained about is indication enough that they are insufficient to protect people.

Sorry to get to this thread so late, but my kids went to primary schools in Hackney and the reasons for the security are threefold:

1. Paedophiles.
2. Local feral youth breaking in.
3. Keep the kids from going out.

Rushmore Primary School in Hackney is near a takeaway which does more than food and inconveniently was the scene of a gun battle at 3 o’clock in the afternoon a couple of years ago.

@Dave,
1. Show me one instance of a non-related person abusing a kid at school that wasn’t a teacher, janitor or priest.
2. Shouldn’t they be in school?
3. Like a prison? Surely an aware teacher wouldn’t let a kid wander off on their own?