The school lockdown crisis is real, but most people don’t want to talk about it - until they experience it for themselves.

We’re on a mission to get the whole system to do lockdowns differently, though, before other school leaders have to go through what we went through.

So far, we have supported more than 400 schools and trusts across the country, and even internationally.

We recently had a school in Qatar reach out to us. To be honest, we didn’t factor in missile strikes when we were designing our system, but it works just as well for these kinds of threats as it does for the more everyday stuff we face in UK schools.

More schools going into lockdowns

In fact, barely a day goes by at the moment when we don’t hear of a school going into lockdown, often unnecessarily. And when they do, there can often be serious unintended consequences, similar to those we faced.

Back in February 2024, we had a suspected intruder at one of our schools. We followed the existing Department for Education non-statutory guidance and went straight into a full lockdown. It was a disaster, and one we could not have foreseen.

Although the lockdown went to plan and lasted all of nine minutes, with children going back to learning afterwards as if nothing had happened, we ended up dealing with a secondary crisis when a hundred parents and members of the community forced their way through the school gates, damaged property and caused injury to children.

Emotions running high

A school going into lockdown stirs up people’s emotions, and there can be unintended consequences when rational thinking goes out of the window.

Every time we do a presentation at a conference, we have people come up to us to tell us that similarly horrendous things have happened at their school.

Sometimes school leaders are worried about the press finding out about their lockdown experiences because they are concerned about looking silly. But the more open we all are about this crisis, the easier it will be to deal with.

No official data exists, but we’ve worked out that, since January 2025, well over 200 UK schools have had to go into lockdown.

The risk of making the wrong decision

And school lockdowns are becoming more and more frequent. Yet often the threats are not real. We’ve had a massive increase in lockdowns triggered by hoax emails and intruders on site, most of whom turn out to be ex-pupils.

Even many of the genuine threats didn’t necessarily require schools to go into full lockdown.

Yet, despite how common lockdowns are becoming, most schools just do not have the proper training to deal with them. We are leaving headteachers to make massive, critical decisions in highly volatile situations without a reliable framework.

On top of that, with Martyn’s Law coming into force, it is now a strict legal requirement for educational settings to prove they are prepared. Frankly, many simply aren’t ready to meet those statutory duties.

Creating a system to help

To fix this, we built a system that actually works on the ground. SMART Response completely scraps the “lockdown or nothing” default. Instead, we use a pragmatic, five-step levelled system - ranging from Level 0 just for monitoring, right up to Level 4 for a full lockdown.

This system means we can respond proportionately to a threat without causing unnecessary escalation or panic.

We also implemented a strict, compartmentalised command structure. We use Gold for strategy, Silver for tactical ground operations and Bronze for direct communication.

We also added dedicated support roles, like a chief of staff and a scribe, to make sure real-time information is controlled and every single decision is logged for accountability.

We aligned the strategy with the National Decision Model used by the UK emergency services, and customised it for educational contexts.

It stops staff from reacting on instinct and forces a logical, lawful response.

Because the national safety procedures are so lacking, we have made the entire SMART Response framework - including the training modules and policy templates - available to other schools for free.

The idea of a lockdown at your school is not pleasant - but the reality is it could happen, so having a plan, knowing how to react and avoiding unnecessary issues is vitally important.

We hope our framework gives everyone a tested, realistic way to handle these incidents as effectively and efficiently as possible.

David Lowbridge-Ellis MBE is director of educational standards for Matrix Academy Trust, which runs nine schools in the West Midlands

Gary Smart leads on capital and compliance for Matrix Academy Trust

They will be sharing more insights about their SMART Response resources at The Education Business Conference in Newcastle on 11 June. This is a national conference delivered by Schools North East in collaboration with the Department for Education and is based on the DfE’s Maximising Value for Pupils programme. The event is designed for anyone involved in school or trust operations and strategic planning.