Stay Safe! (Don't go to Temple Moor!)

Perhaps a little overdue, but I feel I must go back to a story relating to the fire alarms last week. One student, whom currently attends 6th Form at Temple Moor, has been quite bemused as of late; after receiving a letter home stating how he could easily have been lost during evacuation. He, allegedly, was nowhere to be found during the first fire failure. That's a wise move from Temple Moor, issuing these letters home - after all, safety is paramount. What was slightly less wise, was issuing these letters to a student who was both in the line as he should've been, and was registered along with everyone else. Another failure of the school system, which I have blogged about more times than I should have to.

And, more bemusing still, the school does not have any strict fire procedures - making this even more farcical. "Guests" or parents who are visitting the school, for whatever reason, are not (in all cases I know of) required to sign in - meaning, should a fire break out, nobody would know they were even in the building. That's a lawsuit just begging to brought forward, isn't it? It is law to have anyone visitting an institution, such as a school, to sign in and out, for emergencies just like the two we very nearly had in the past two weeks. So why do Temple Moor not enforce this? I'm sure they'll be pleased to answer that personally.

And, sorry to dwell on the subject, but the little safety procedure the school has (run outside and form queues along unstraight lines which bend unfortunately around poorly placed picnic benches, making a mockery of the whole concept of "lining up") are, to say the very least, abysmal. Near every pupil of the school are crammed together, almost shoulder to shoulder, in queues that do not accomodate the size of a typical class. And, as stated, the picnic benches slap-bang in the middle of this emergency meeting area really are a pain in the arse. Add to that the fact that teachers obviously do a poor job of registering, and you've got yourself quite possibly the worst emergency protocol ever devised. I'd rather sit inside and risk a fire, thankyou.

All students from Year 8 onwards, who were lucky enough to have witnessed the school's disasterous attempts to keep students safe from the Chlorine spill last year, know exactly how poor Temple Moor deal with real emergencies - and they deal just as badly with these drills. How would they manage should a genuine fire emerge? I dare not think about it; it still makes me shudder.