Jeremy Malies looks at recent legislation, current products, case studies, and expectations as to duty of care. The survey spans simple locked doors to the advent of the intelligent campus. An overview shows where current technology is excelling and where it continues to fall short.
Places of education from primary schools right up to leading university colleges should never have fortress-like security; the culture should be inclusive and welcoming with a focus on quality of experience. And yet there is also an overriding obligation to eliminate risk to pupils, students, and indeed staff even if this means challenging the entry credentials of every conceivable kind of visitor.
Martyn’s Law
Laws named after individuals! This is a great development and a humanising of legislation worldwide. Megan’s Law requires publicly available information about registered sex offenders. Sarah’s Law gives parents the right to ask police if somebody has convictions for child sexual offences. Clare’s Law empowers people to ask authorities if their partner has a history of domestic abuse.
So, what is Martyn’s Law and how will it affect physical security in the education sector?
Martyn Hett was one of 22 people killed by terrorist Salman Abedi during the Ariana Grande concert at the AO Arena in Manchester in 2017. Martyn’s mother, Figen, has campaigned for new regulations which will better protect the public in all environments and notably in education.
The Law has specific content to improve preparedness and reduce harm to schools and universities from such attacks. (Ariana Grande’s demographic appeal meant that many of the killed and injured were young but Martyn was 29.) The legislation received Royal Assent in 2025. There will be a 24-month period of implementation but in distinct phases or medium-size increments rather than a gradual process.
A prime requirement is that any place of education (right down to early years providers) that could have 200 learners assembled – even if this is a peak attendance – must have an evacuation and lockdown plan in the event of a terrorist threat. There must also be a plan for invacuation. (For me, "invacuation" is a clumsy phrase, and a better term is "shelter in place".) The focus will be on proportionate planning and preparedness.
So how are security manufacturers, installers, consultants, industry regulators as well as observers reacting? How are they responding to the Law’s provisions for primary, secondary and further education? This article (my remit is a broad view of educational security technology over and above Martyn’s Law) will consider areas including:
- access control
- video surveillance
- perimeter security
- lockdown procedures
All of us looking at security requirements and procedures in education think, in the first instance, of mass communication and emergency alerts during critical incidents. Media coverage of horrific crimes across the world has conditioned us this way. Providers of such systems look to optimise lockdown procedures and critical incident responses through audio (public address & voice alarm), other mass communication methods, and emergency alert platforms.
The aim is to deliver clear, understandable alerts that are targeted across zones within a building, cluster of buildings, or campus. Administrators must be able to adapt messages to particular areas according to the precise threat. Public address is a primary mode, but of course messages to desktops and push notification systems are important. Inevitably with young people, alerts to smartphones perhaps by a campus-issue App are a must as is use of official campus social media accounts.
Security in education must be layered – I would even use the word "nested" – across subsets. At points of entrance, UK senior schools rely on video surveillance, video intercom, and assessments based on staff observations. Only when there has been intelligence suggesting a threat do police become involved. Specific risk scenarios (again the likelihood is word of mouth and perhaps related social unrest in the wider area) may see occasional use of hand-held wand or walk-through metal detectors.
In the last five years there have been disturbing incidents (met with use of metal detectors) of pupils taking weapons into primary and middle schools in Cardiff, Wales. The items included knives, BB guns, and even a metal ruler sharpened to a blade.
But the UK has not been obliged to go down the route of (occasionally malfunctioning) AI weapon detection that sent a school in Seminole County, Florida, into lockdown. The false positive occurred when the system mistook the clarinet being carried by a music student for a firearm. Disruption to the curriculum must have been significant, and depending on the mental robustness of the pupil involved, the error could have been at best a distraction and at worst the cause of distress.
Draw a schematic of a legacy security system at, say, a UK middle school and you would come up with an assembly of cameras, locks (both key-based and fob or biometric door readers and controllers), perhaps a few passive infrared sensors (PIRs) and fencing but this would be fences as a traditional barrier not a detection device.
By contrast, new designs are truly connected systems in which threats surface in real time and can be acted on while an intruder or other miscreant is still on site. AI-enabled video monitoring can alert staff to atypical behaviour immediately without the need to trawl through footage. Similarly, unusual patterns of movement or sensors alerting on doors propped ajar can create alarms.
"Solving for time" is a new phrase that comes up in tender documents. School and university stakeholders want broad views of their premises without the wage costs associated with manned guarding and staff staring at screens. There is also insistence that access control should be able to lock down areas in a precise way when an intruder is detected but also give pupils and staff optimum routes out to points of safety and places where a roll call can be taken.
Video surveillance
Camera usage at schools is a fraught topic. Parents obviously want minimal if any recording of their children. And yet, even the simplest video analytics can assist managers by alerting on situations such as a corridor or choke point intersection becoming overcrowded. And young people often react better to being told something digitally than being addressed by their elders. It’s uncontested now that on simple matters such as overcrowding, AI makes better and quicker decisions than humans and can communicate information well in noisy environments through attention-grabbing public address, signage or other visual cues that can even extend to strobe indicators. Assuming that the component systems are integrated on the same platform, the chain of messaging will be quicker without human intervention. It barely needs to be mentioned that human intelligence can then focus on higher value tasks.
Even the most privacy-focused parent will concede that if an active shooter is at large on a campus and video feeds can allow security staff to overpower them or give first responders the best locational information, then young people appearing on camera is an acceptable aspect of the larger situation.
Are there go-to specialised camera brands for the education sector?
In a word, "No!", and one might be skeptical of a vendor who claimed to have a universal solution for educational settings. Any commercial video surveillance brand will serve many industries, but certain suppliers have put serious thought into how their offerings can be used in education, with emphasis on seamless integration between camera streams, video management systems (VMS) and access control.
Motorola Solutions has an impressive case study in which its video surveillance and evidence gathering has allowed it to partner with the University of Oklahoma and the local police department serving the university’s Norman campus. (Norman is the third biggest city in Oklahoma.) I have just watched a webinar in which stakeholders discuss surveillance and bodycam evidence management and how Motorola has empowered law enforcement officers with a comprehensive discovery package. The focus is on information-sharing and rapid assembly of evidence from multiple agencies.
An educational case study close to my home is by Eagle Eye Networks (a Brivo Solution). Ibstock Place School in south-west London worked with installer SES Technologies to expand video surveillance. The client also wanted a sliding scale of footage retention periods. Executives at the school have the foresight to be following developments in video analytics closely and asked for complex event alerting capability. Futureproofing was vital throughout the project for a user with a commitment to open platforms and wanting easy integration with third-party technology.
The school is benefiting from instant access to live and recorded footage through the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS. SES Technologies ensured continuity of service as they migrated the school from on-site to Cloud systems. Eagle Eye Networks marketing describes specific education solutions, and the success of this project endorses such claims.
Lockdown procedures
If a school, college or university has one overriding duty of care, it is perhaps to have optimised lockdown procedures should an intruder gain access to the site. Technology providers are rightly focused on solutions for this, and ASSA ABLOY can point to their portfolio of dedicated educational security offerings. These contrast with generic products, perhaps with a few tweaks, offered by many commercial hardware companies. Crucially, a dedicated lockdown product will balance rigour in closing areas of a site with the (possibly) conflicting demands on the fire and life-safety spectrums.
SMARTair® Lockdown from ASSA ABLOY is designed to allow facility managers to lock down access points such as doors and gates in response to intruder threats and can be used in a precise manner as a miscreant is observed moving around a campus. SMARTair® is truly responsive to site-specific needs and can be enabled remotely through mobile devices. As with vendors right across this survey, ASSA ABLOY appreciates the need to ensure general site continuity during installation which can be done wire-free. The system will open, close or block access points based on predefined settings or according to an operator’s individual judgements, giving senior site managers optimum control during emergencies.
Financial background
Finance directors at schools and universities should be included in discussions in the first instance and (if they have good judgement!) their views must be part of the mix. The survey of the education sector for this article has thrown up case studies where enthusiastic governing boards have taken short-term grants to finance sophisticated systems but have been unable to maintain and upgrade them, install patches, train staff and cover future license fees. Discerning budget controllers can look beyond features to consider usability in the long run.
Industry analysts are quick to give their opinions about best practice, but case studies by leading vendors are often a better source of information about optimum approaches. A linguistics faculty at the University of Lodz in Poland is using the GenetecTM Security Center for access control as part of a smart campus hub. The project forms a dispersed infrastructure initiative (a phrase I like) and the client has complimented Genetec on their product’s ability to integrate with IoT devices as electricity, water and thermal energy consumption are all optimised. The university is looking to set the standard for smart buildings in higher education in the region.
Moving to another usage example that allows us to focus on a few trends, Paxton Access have installed their Net2 networked access control system at Higham Lane School which caters for pupils between 11 and 18 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The school has more than 1,400 students and is part of the Central England Academy Trust. A notable aspect of the installation (echoed in other usage cases) is that as part of safeguarding plans, there was an absolute requirement for a full audit trail of entrance, egress, and general movement across the site.
Specifiers wanted a video door entry intercom system at the entrance gate as well as integration with existing video surveillance and a fire alarm system. Simple, effective roll call functions (an obvious requirement in education) were also mandated. In addition to the obvious control of movement and awareness of site usage, the school has benefited from reduced risk of theft and vandalism. Installers MES Systems Ltd have been able to react quickly to the needs of school managers by providing remote system configuration using the Net2Online web user interface and the Paxton Connect app which operates from smart devices.
Increasingly in secondary schools, senior pupils may be issued with cards or fobs using RFID/NFC technology for access. In business contexts there might be use of phones and smart watches as credential devices but in schools this is avoided. Usage can be as simple as opening the door of an area used by only a few students, perhaps a music room or an arts workshop. Access control technology might open a locker containing specialist sports equipment. As with adults, there may be higher user privileges for prefects and student leaders. I have avoided any discussion of pupil violence towards staff here but such incidents and the publicity they create will make administrators conservative in terms of access rights.
So, can I draw any conclusions from this survey of physical security across the education sector? I have certainly absorbed the fact that data needs to flow rather than be siloed. Case study after case study has shown that schools, colleges, and universities throw up the same demanding requirements against familiar backdrops. Footfall is high and there is the cocktail of differing access rights for academic staff, technical staff, and employees engaged in administration. As with any organization, operational continuity is vital but not as important as factoring out risk from miscreants be they intruders, disaffected staff, current or former pupils.
Any more lessons? Knowing that it may sound like a platitude, I conclude that the best advice for facility managers is to use existing tools in the first instance for observational exercises. What are the movement patterns of pupils and staff – both academic and administrative? Can heat maps from existing technology help us? How and when do students use the most important assets on campus? In what way do they integrate socially and academically with third parties? Look to these issues first, making the very best use you can of legacy equipment. Talk to installers and manufacturers who have good credentials. Then and only then start buying new technology.
However sophisticated the technical offerings and genuine the duty of care shown by facilities managers, any consideration of security in the education sector takes one back to the same realities noted at the beginning. And these fundamentals are the same for nursery or reception-year primary school pupils as for pensioners from the UK’s Open University gathered at a campus during the summer vacation. The core challenges for authorities are to protect everybody on their site, protect assets from theft, engage with neighbouring communities rather than being a fortress, optimise the learning potential of everybody who wishes to study, empower those whose role is to teach, and ensure recreational facilities are available for all. That is quite a remit!