Why your safety system should be one your staff use every day

Martyn’s Law asks schools and colleges for procedures staff can follow under pressure. The tools behind those procedures matter more than most plans admit.

Every school runs fire drills for the same reason: in an emergency, people do what they’ve practised. Nobody expects staff to read the evacuation plan while the alarm is sounding.

Martyn’s Law extends that thinking to lockdown, invacuation and communicating with everyone on site. The Standard Tier duty is about procedures that are proportionate, understood and practised. It doesn’t require any particular technology. But most schools will use some form of alert or notification to put those procedures into action, and that is where a familiar tool makes a real difference.

The problem with a system you only touch in a drill

Many emergency notification tools are built to sit quietly until they are needed. That sounds sensible, but it creates three practical problems:

1. Staff don’t know it well. A panel, app or button used three times a year is one more thing to remember at the worst possible moment.
2. You don’t know it works. If nobody uses a system day to day, a logged-out app or disconnected screen may only surface during a drill, or an incident.
3. It’s another system to train on and support. Every separate tool adds to the training load your Responsible Person needs to plan and evidence, and is one more system IT has to support, budget for and troubleshoot when things don’t work.

What changes when the alert comes through a tool staff already use

When alerts arrive through the platform teachers use to share their screen, run the classroom display and stream content to students, the picture is different:

• No new interface under pressure. Staff see the alert on the screens and devices they look at all lesson.
• Everyone in the room sees the instruction. Alerts on classroom displays, corridor and reception signage reach students and visitors, not just staff.
• Daily use is a daily health check. If a screen or device is in use every lesson, you know it is live and connected.
• Drills test the real system. Because the same tool is used every day, a drill rehearses exactly what would happen in an incident.

“We have been using Vivi around the school for a couple of years now, in classrooms for teaching and learning as well as around the school for digital signage – so it is great knowing that we are able to use that one system to easily communicate [emergency] messages to staff and students instantly, using devices that are already part of our classrooms.” – Michael Grundy, ICT Support, Childwall Sports and Science Academy

Five questions to test your current set-up

• How many different systems would a teacher need to operate in a lockdown?
• When did staff last use your alert system outside a drill?
• Would students in a corridor, dining hall or library see the instruction?
• Can you show who received and acknowledged the last alert, and how quickly?
• Who owns your lockdown, invacuation and evacuation procedures, and when were they last drilled?

If any answer gives you pause, that is the place to start, whatever technology you use.

How Vivi approaches this

Vivi is the campus operating system for schools. The same platform teachers use for wireless screen sharing and Stream to Students also runs digital signage and announcements across your site. In an incident, it delivers scenario-specific alerts to every display, full-screen alerts with acknowledgement to staff devices through Vivi Device Alerts, and a record of who was reached.

One platform staff know, used every day, ready for the day it matters most. Book a demonstration to learn more.