Dear Parents and Carers
Hmmm, what to write about this week…….? Let me start with the students. I have said a lot about how impressed we were with their conduct on Monday but wanted to stress this again. This really isn’t a line just to make people feel better, they really were fantastic. It’s the first time they were evacuated without it being a drill, a malfunction, burnt toast etc. So maybe it was the look on staff faces (they know we wouldn’t evacuate in an exam unless there was a really good reason) or the sight of the Year 11s and 13s being evacuated onto the field separately and in exam conditions, whatever it was they stepped up and were absolute perfection in that process. And as for our Year 11s and 13s in the exam, they were sat on the field in exam conditions for a long time before we had to abandon the end of their exams and they could then talk. In these circumstances responsible conduct keeps everybody safe, it’s not just about the individual – brilliant job by all.
The police will always operate a safety-first approach to these situations hence the decision to do a full search with sniffer dogs. They shipped in four dogs from around the region and searched every room and office in the school. I was stood close enough to see one of the dogs, a spaniel I think, as it bounded towards the maths rooms dragging the officer behind. I’ve never seen a tail wag so fast, these dogs really love their work – a whole secondary school to sniff, what could be better than that? I spoke to an officer who said each dog’s sense of smell can be as much as 100,000 times greater than that of a human (I really pity the poor pooch who ended up checking the upper school boys’ toilet – bet its tail drooped when faced with that, probably has PTSD now) so there is no better or faster way of declaring an area safe. They finished in the early hours, and I got the call to return the site to us at around 5.00am. As you know the uncertainty of when we would get the site back, along with the knowledge that staff may struggle to get into school from whatever home, friend’s floor, hotel, pub car park they ended up sleeping in prompted the decision to remain closed on Tuesday, thank you for your patience with that.
One of the last members of staff to leave on Monday night was Linda Jones who runs our animal care, not due to transport issues but because some chicks had hatched just the day before. They were in the animal cabin and Linda was taking care of them which meant sorting temperature out, water etc. Then we all got evacuated and try as she might, the police would not fetch the chicks or let Linda in – priority was the search as you can appreciate. It got hot on Monday and as we all left in the evening, we were convinced we would return to several very dehydrated and very tiny portions of KFC in the animal cabin. However, early on Tuesday I had to put away my chips and chilli dip, they had all survived the experience and are alive and well.
Tuesday morning, after the police had removed the last of the cordon and returned the site, staff started to arrive. We got inside, secured all the exam papers from the day before (they were left on the tables in the venues), retrieved all the stationary from the exam halls and prepared for our day. Then, from around 6.45am and for about 30 minutes there was the most God-awful noise in upper school as the 300 or so bags that had to be left by the Year 11s and 13s erupted with 300 or so alarms on 300 or so phones to wake the kids up. It was a din that really got under the fillings and featured some charming spoken alarms in which some of our charmers use an expletive-laden tirade of abuse to wake themselves up! This video has a small flavour of this before Mr Phipps had enough and commandeered several staff to get them all switched off.
Monday was the first time we have had to use our critical incident plan (all schools have them). It’s been a long-standing arrangement between Myton and Warwick School that we would support one another should the need arise, and they really stepped up. Not only did we evacuate all our kids and staff through their grounds, but they also set us up in a control room to work from with food, drink etc. and we’re very grateful to them. We know we were slower than we’d have liked in getting messages out as we had evacuated without the right tech to remote access our systems, however we got sorted as quickly as we could and started our communications (bit of learning for the critical incident plan there – now got several laptops connected to our system on constant charge around the site ready to go). The police remain in touch each day bringing me up to speed with investigations, they are working hard on this and will no doubt share information as they have it. Chief Inspector Faz Chishty has also remained in touch, he was very complementary about the kids and staff and really helped my team and I manage the situation.
Key thing is kids and staff were safe throughout and all the drills we do over the years really do pay off when you need them.
Have a great half term!
Best wishes
Andy Perry
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