School and Education Security

A school is not a construction site with children in it. The risk sits in a different place, the people you are protecting cannot be inducted, and the person who makes the decision is a business manager or a head, accountable to governors and to Ofsted rather than to a principal contractor.

Andor Group provides security officers, gate cover, monitored CCTV and holiday cover to schools, academies and colleges across Hampshire and the south of England.

What makes school security different

On most commercial sites the objective is keeping people out. In a school the harder objective is knowing exactly who is inside, because the duty of care runs to several hundred children who did not choose to be there.

That changes the emphasis. The gate matters more than the perimeter. Identity checking matters more than deterrence. And the tolerance for getting it wrong is effectively nil — an unchecked adult on site is a safeguarding incident whether or not anything happens, and it is reportable as one.

The second difference is the calendar. A school is densely occupied for thirty-nine weeks and empty for thirteen, and the security problem inverts completely between the two. Most schools buy for term time and discover the holiday problem after the first break-in.

Safeguarding, DBS and your single central record

This is the part that decides whether a security supplier is usable, and it is worth being precise rather than reassuring.

DBS. Anyone engaged in regulated activity with children needs an enhanced DBS check including a children’s barred list check. Whether a security officer falls into regulated activity depends on the role: an officer working unsupervised where children are present is a different case from one attending an empty site overnight. We supply officers checked to the level the role requires, and we will tell you which level applies rather than leaving the school to work it out.

Your single central record. Schools must maintain an SCR covering people working at the school, including contractors. That means you need documentation from us, not assurances — identity, right to work, DBS certificate number and issue date, and the date checks were completed. We provide it as a matter of course, formatted so it can go straight onto the record.

Keeping Children Safe in Education. KCSIE is statutory guidance, it is updated every year, and the parts that bear on contractors are safer recruitment and the checks above. A supplier who has not heard of it is telling you something.

SIA licensing. Separate from all of the above and not a substitute for it. Every officer holds a valid SIA licence for the role; the licence says nothing about suitability to work around children, which is what the DBS check is for.

Visitors and contractors. The same standard has to apply to everyone the gate admits — trades, deliveries, peripatetic staff, parents. An officer who checks contractors properly but waves through anyone in a lanyard has not solved the problem.

The gate, and who gets through it

Most school security problems are access problems. Someone follows a parent through at drop-off. A contractor arrives unannounced and is let through because turning them away feels rude. A door propped open for a delivery stays open.

A gate officer changes that by making the check routine rather than a judgement call at the moment of pressure: identity verified, expected visitors confirmed against the day’s list, unexpected ones held while the office is called, everyone signed in and out, and a record that exists afterwards. The awkwardness of refusing someone moves from your staff to a person whose job it is.

Our writing on this goes into more detail: best school gate security for safer access and how to secure school premises properly.

Term time and the holidays are two different jobs

In term time the problem is controlled access with hundreds of people moving through it. Cover is usually a gate officer at the start and end of the day, sometimes a presence through the day on larger or split sites.

In the holidays the school becomes a vacant property with valuable, portable contents and a site that local young people know well. The risks are intrusion, damage, fires set in bin stores and roof access. Cover shifts to patrols, monitored CCTV or an overnight presence — the same approach we take to vacant property, applied to a building that will be full again in a fortnight.

Specifying both together usually costs less than buying them separately, because the same team covers the year.

Which services apply

• Gate and access control — identity checks, visitor logging, contractor management at the entrance
• Security officers — a presence during the day, at events, or overnight in the holidays
• CCTV and monitoring — coverage of approaches, bin stores, roof access and other known trouble spots
• Mobile patrols — holiday and weekend cover without a permanent officer
• Keyholding and alarm response — so an activation at 2am does not fall to the site manager

What a typical deployment looks like

A secondary school on a single site usually runs a gate officer covering arrival and departure, CCTV on the approaches and the known access points, and patrol cover through the holidays. A split-site or multi-form-entry school adds daytime presence and a second gate. A primary school more often needs holiday cover and an alarm response arrangement than a daily officer.

We survey before quoting. The variables that actually matter are the number of entrances, whether the site is overlooked, the boundary and its weak points, what happened last year, and how the school uses the premises out of hours — lettings, clubs and community use change the picture completely.

Reporting your governors will accept

Every attendance, patrol and incident is logged through HitDesk with its time and location, and is available to you directly rather than summarised at the end of the month.

That matters in a school for a specific reason: security reporting ends up in front of a governing body or a trust board, and a verifiable record answers questions that an assurance does not. It also gives you evidence of what was in place, which is what an insurer or a safeguarding review will ask for.

Where we work

We cover schools, academies and colleges across Hampshire and the wider south of England, including Southampton, Portsmouth, Winchester, Basingstoke, Andover and Alton. Our operational base is Southampton — see school security in Southampton.

Common questions

Are your officers DBS checked?

We supply officers checked to the level the role requires, and we will tell you which level that is. An officer working unsupervised where children are present needs an enhanced check with a children’s barred list check; an officer attending an empty site overnight is a different case. We provide the certificate details for your single central record.

What do you give us for the single central record?

Identity, right to work, DBS certificate number and issue date, and the dates checks were completed, supplied in a form you can put straight onto the record rather than as a letter of assurance.

Can the same officer cover every day?

Where the school wants consistency, yes, and in a school it usually matters more than elsewhere — children and staff recognising the person at the gate is part of what makes the arrangement work. We will tell you honestly what continuity we can commit to before you sign.

Do we need cover in the school holidays?

Most schools do, and it is the gap we are most often called about after the event. An empty school with IT equipment in it is a vacant property, and the people most likely to enter it know the site well.

What about lettings and community use?

Out-of-hours use changes the access picture and is frequently the weakest point, because the routines that work in term time are not running. It should be part of the specification rather than an exception to it.

How quickly can you cover an incident?

For schools within our area we can usually put cover in place within a few days, and faster where there has been an incident. Tell us what has happened and we will give you a real timescale.

Do you work with trusts across multiple sites?

Yes, and multi-site is where consistent reporting earns its keep — one arrangement, one point of contact, and records across the estate rather than per school. Our guide to choosing a multi-site security provider covers what to ask.

Further reading

Why manned guarding for schools matters · 10 best security measures for schools · School security compliance guide for leaders · How to improve school site safety

Discuss your school

Tell us about the site, the entrances and what the holidays look like, and we will tell you what it needs. Get in touch on 020 4602 3974 or at sales@andorgroup.com.