Education chiefs decide no regional interventions are required to school security measures

Twm Owen, local democracy reporter

No new decisions are needed on school lockdown arrangements education chiefs have concluded.

Concerns about safety arrangements at schools have been heightened after two teachers and a pupil were injured at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in Carmarthenshire in April and a 13-year-old girl was charged with three counts of attempted murder.

As a result the school was placed in lockdown for around four hours, with no-one permitted to leave or enter the site, and in the days that followed the Ebbw Fawr Learning Community Secondary Campus, in Ebbw Vale, was placed in partial lockdown after police were alerted of threats made while police in Swansea made an arrest after a knife was brought to a secondary school.

School security

Members of Torfaen Borough Council’s education committee, who wanted to know if Ammanford incident had prompted it to review school security, were told lockdown arrangements would be discussed when the council hosted a meeting of Gwent education directors in May.

A spokesman for Torfaen council, following that meeting, said it was agreed support for headteachers regarding the management of their school sites should continue to be provided individually by the five local authorities across Gwent.

The spokesman said: “Support for headteachers regarding site management will continue to be supported by individual local authorities. No specific regional decisions regarding shared professional learning were taken at this monthly meeting of regional directors.”

They added regional directors meet regularly to discuss a wide range of “shared issues”.