Evacuations

Schools are required to hold evacuations drills each term. These are to cover earthquake, lockdown and fire drills. They are held and reported to the BoT as a requirement.

Due to our COVID policy last term to not mix classes and groups of students we did not hold our regular evacuations, so we didn't remind you.

Drills are a necessary health and safety measure. This was certainly the case in 2011 when we had just practiced our earthquake drill and then when the earthquake struck the children were calm in doing what they needed to do. The same again during the mosque shootings. We had practiced the day before and as I locked down the school I informed them that it wasn't a drill. Once again our staff and children calmly went into lockdown.

In the first part of the year children are warned prior to the drill and it is discussed. We use the drills to test our processes. Later the drill becomes part of what we do around here and we don't always give a warning as we need to test the processes under real conditions.

We won't be informing you every time we do a drill as they sometimes get changed due to a variety of circumstances. 

If a child informs you they have had a drill discuss with them what happened, what they did and reassure them that the drills are necessary. To build our children's resilience they are sometimes put into challenging situations. Our role is to reassure them and reinforce that they did the right thing.

You will be informed if we have a real situation. During the mosque shooting lockdown I communicated regularly with whānau keeping them posted about what was happening inside the school.