Safeguarding students is a sacred duty that tops the list of priorities for every school. It’s enshrined in law. It’s what every parent expects.
As part of this duty, schools take monitoring the personnel on school premises very seriously. This includes making sure that all pupils can be accounted for at all times. But also having strict protocols in place for visitors, from vetting those allowed on school premises, to ensuring those who don’t have permission to be are kept out.
Kiosks are now an integral part of that. Gone are the days when visitors signed a book and were handed an anonymous badge to wear. Nearly every school now has kiosks in their reception area to log arrivals, cross-reference approved appointments, and print out photocard badges and passes.
As identification technology continues to evolve, the potential for kiosks to play an even bigger role in school security management and safeguarding just grows and grows. Here are three examples of how the latest kiosk technologies are making schools even safer places.
Instant Visitor Screening and Vetting
Parents, supply teachers, school contractors and more will already be familiar with using touchscreen kiosks at schools to register their name, have their photo taken, and get instant passes printed out. But modern kiosks can go a step further and vet visitors in real time, running checks for their name, photo or scanned ID cards against DBS records. As biometric scanning becomes more commonplace, school kiosks will also be able to confirm the identity of an individual to prevent fraudulent attempts to access school premises.
Access Control Integration
Kiosks don’t have to work in isolation logging visitors and printing badges. They can also be integrated with digital door control systems. Visitors need clearance from the kiosk and a badge to scan to get through digitally locked doors. This can be set up so access to different parts of the school can be restricted, for example with different scannable codes for different areas. Any attempt to access the school fraudulently, meanwhile, can initiate immediate lockdown while the police are alerted.
Student Attendance Tracking
Finally, pupil safeguarding is not just a matter of ensuring only authorised people can get into and move around schools. It also involves keeping tabs on children themselves, making sure they are where they should be and can be accounted for. Some schools have started to introduce ‘tap in’ student registration systems to streamline attendance monitoring. This helps to raise alerts about absent pupils sooner than would happen waiting for class registers to be taken and shared with a central database, which is in itself a safeguarding improvement.
The next phase of this development is introducing systems where pupils tap in and out of every classroom. This means that attendance data is kept up to date throughout the day, raising the alarm if students go missing, and providing real-time records in the event of fire drills or emergencies, helping staff account for every pupil. Again, these kinds of systems will no doubt become more commonplace as identification transitions from ID cards to biometrics, meaning every pupil can ‘tap in’ or out with just a finger print or hand scan.
