Writing a lockdown procedure
Most school lockdown procedures are written for a document folder. This is about writing one for a Tuesday afternoon.
Two things to settle
First, what a lockdown is for at your school. In practice it is rarely terrorism. It is an aggressive adult on site, a police incident nearby, a dangerous dog, a chemical spill, or a pupil in crisis. Writing the procedure for those makes it a document staff can imagine using.
Second, the difference between a full lockdown, securing one block, and an invacuation. Three different instructions, and staff must be able to tell them apart under pressure. If your current procedure has one word for all three, that is the first thing to fix and it costs nothing.
Six sections, in this order
Anything longer than two sides will not be read.
- 1
Who decides
Named roles, in order, with a deputy who is not usually in the same part of the site. And explicit permission for anyone to raise the alarm if they cannot reach a decision-maker.
- 2
How the signal is given
The actual mechanism, and the backup when the person who normally does it is the person dealing with the incident.
- 3
What staff do
Six lines maximum. Lock, move away from windows and doors, silence, register, wait. Written the same way in every classroom.
- 4
What leaders do
999, the gate, the roll call, the parents, the governors, the local authority. Owned by name.
- 5
The all-clear
How it is given, and how staff know it is genuine. This is the section most often missing entirely.
- 6
Afterwards
Who records what happened, who debriefs, who tells parents.
Six gaps we see repeatedly
People outside the building
PE on the field, a class at forest school, a group in a mobile classroom, a trip returning.
Visitors and contractors
In the building, unaware, and not on anyone's list.
Pupils in toilets and corridors
Between lessons is the hardest moment for any lockdown to be called.
Staff with specific needs
And pupils with mobility, sensory or medical needs who cannot simply be still for an hour.
The office being the incident
Most procedures assume the office is safe and available. Sometimes it is the problem.
Parents arriving
Because somebody has posted about it. Decide who stands at the gate before the day.
What a useful drill looks like
- Announce the first one. An unannounced first drill is how you frighten a Year 3 class and lose staff support.
- Time it. From the decision to every room secured, and write the number down.
- Find the gaps rather than pass the test. The value is entirely in what did not work.
- Include the field, the mobiles and the hall — the places that fail.
- Debrief within 24 hours while people remember.
- Write three paragraphs: date, scenario, what happened, what changed. That is your evidence.
And where it does not
It can secure doors
Access control turns 'somebody runs to lock the external doors' into a decision from a phone.
It can tell named people
Alerts to the leadership team and the site staff, instantly.
It cannot announce to every room
Verkada does not make a public-address system. Whatever you use today for that, you will still use.
It cannot make the decision
Nor should it. The judgement is human and it stays human.
It records what happened
Every trigger, release and door event, time-stamped, which is your post-incident record.
It does not replace practice
A well-drilled school with no technology beats a well-equipped school that has never rehearsed.
What the equipment half looks like
Sources
Everything on this page is taken from these. Checked 25 September 2026.
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