Martyn's Law for schools
Sports day is the number that matters.
About 24,700 education and childcare settings are expected to fall into standard tier. Like places of worship, they stay there however large they get, which removes the worst of the burden but not the duty.
Worked example
What the count actually looks like.
Everyone present at the same moment, on your busiest realistic day. Not an average, and not just the people who paid.
A two-form primary at the summer play
- Pupils
- 210
- Parents, grandparents and siblings
- 180
- Teachers and teaching assistants
- 24
- Office, site and catering staff
- 8
- Governors and parent helpers
- 6
- Present at once
- Standard tier428
428 present at once, in a school whose roll is 210. The roll is not the number. The event is the number.
What catches people out
The parts specific to your sector.
Education stays standard tier however large
Childcare, primary, secondary and further education settings enter standard tier at 200 and stay there. A large secondary with 1,800 on roll is standard tier, not enhanced.
You have probably done most of this already
If you have a lockdown procedure for safeguarding, you have already written one of the four. Martyn's Law overlaps heavily with what you hold for Ofsted and for your local authority. Start by finding what exists rather than writing from scratch.
Parents' evening, the play and sports day
Your peak is almost never a normal school day. It is an evening or a weekend when the site fills with adults who do not know your building.
Lettings bring other people's numbers
If you hire the hall to a church, a martial arts club or a polling station, those people are present in your building too.
Worth knowing: schools and multi-academy trusts enter standard tier at 200 people and stay there however many are present. You do not move up to enhanced tier on headcount alone, whatever your busiest day looks like.
If you look after several
One report, not one exercise per site.
A multi-academy trust with twenty schools has twenty different lockdown procedures written by twenty different people, and no way to see which are current. That is the problem the portfolio board exists for.
Home Office impact assessment: about 24,689 premises in this sector are expected to fall into standard tier.
See how portfolios workFind out where you stand in about a minute.
Six questions, a cited answer, and a result you can print and take to your committee. Plenty of places run it and find they are not in scope at all.