Discover why improving school safety standards and practices is not just important, but essential.
Technology has opened up a huge new range of learning, organisation and management options to both pupils and staff members. Sadly, however, it has also opened up schools to a plethora of potential safety and security risks.
It has become increasingly necessary, then, to prepare yourself for potential risks to safety and security that could affect your school. These can range from data security, access control to improving reception and administrative process and much more.
Read on to discover VisiPoint’s top tips for improving school safety and security in your school.
1. Raise safety and security awareness
One of the most important methods for improving school safety and security is by raising awareness of potential safety and security risks on the premises and how they can be prevented. There are lots of great ways to bring attention to these issues, including:
- Holding regular awareness and training sessions on these issues with pupils, staff members and contractors to ensure that they are fully aware of the potential risks.
- Display posters, infographics and digital signage with safety and security advice.
- Encourage data security best practices such as regularly backing up your important data; being aware of the risks of malware and phishing, as well as best practices with password management.
2. Keep your staff, pupils and visitors up to date on policies and processes
In the same way that it’s hugely important to ensure everyone on site is aware of potential safety risks, it’s also essential that they’re up to date on your school’s policies and processes for safety and security.
This can be achieved in a number of ways, including holding regular meetings and presentations on your policies, sending out information to parents of pupils via email or letter, and posting content on your policies and processes on social media and your school’s website.
A great way to ensure that visitors and contractors are aware of your safety and security policies before they are allowed on site is to make them agree to your policies when they first sign in to the premises. VisiPoint allows you to display your terms and policies to visitors and contractors when they sign in for the first time, which they then have to accept in order to sign into the premises.
3. Improve your reception and administration processes
One particular area of your school that can be particularly problematic when it comes to safety and security is your reception.
Typically, school reception areas regularly deal with hundreds of visitors, staff members, pupils and more. This constant influx of people brings with it a huge amount of data to manage.
A great solution to this is to invest in a sign-in system that makes it incredibly simple and quick to manage all of this data. VisiPoint allows you to sign-in pupils, staff, visitors, contractors and much more; and stores your data securely in the cloud in compliance with GDPR.
Want to learn more about why a sign-in system is essential to improving school safety and security? Get in touch with a member of the VisiPoint team for a no-pressure about your requirements.
4. Limit access to the premises
One great way to improve school safety is to limit access to the premises to only those who need to access them. This is typically facilitated by issuing approved individuals with access control key fobs and cards, which allow them to access the premises by scanning them using a small reader.
This ensures that pupils, staff and other people on the premises are safe and secure from anyone who should not be allowed on site.
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Want to learn more about how access control and visitor management technology? Take a look at our blog post on this!
5. Take data security seriously
It’s never been more essential to ensure that your data security procedures are up to scratch and – unfortunately – it’s also never been more daunting. With the sheer amount of potential threats to your online security, privacy and information out there, it can be tricky to know what to prioritise when it comes to cybersecurity.
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Want to learn more about why a visitor management and sign-in system is an essential component in improving school safety and security processes? Get in touch with VisiPoint! We’ll be more than happy to answer any queries you may have about our system and discuss how it can transform your reception processes.