TEACH is a Multi-Academy Trust of primary schools comprising two infant schools, two junior schools and an Initial Teacher
Training Centre, which trains up to 30 primary school teachers per year situated in Canford Heath, a suburban area of Poole,
Dorset. Almost 1500 pupils, from ages 4yrs to 11yrs attend across the four schools.
The Trust’s Health and Safety Coordinator faced a challenging task to provide an effective lockdown alert system for each school.
Luminite’s ALERTEX critical alert range was chosen as it could provide a wireless solution, negating the need for a hard-wired
system which would have been more costly in terms of resources and installation.
Luminite supplied a mixture of internal and external units meaning that no matter where the initial alert point was triggered and
due to ‘flood technology’, all pupils and staff both inside and out would hear the voice alert and see the flashing blue beacons.
ALERTEX lockdown units are deliberately blue in colour to differentiate them from fire beacons and there are 32 sounds to choose
from to further differentiate them from fire alarms. The fact that the ALERTEX system could be installed by the Trust’s own Site
Managers was a significant advantage, as their installation is quick and easy requiring no specialist or technical skills.
The TEACH Trust H&S Coordinator said “The ALERTEX system was installed without any disruption to the school day by the Site
teams, following simple instructions supplied by Luminite who were available throughout for back-up support. After fully
preparing our pupils for the event, we successfully completed lockdown drills without causing any distress to pupils or staff.
There are no ongoing maintenance costs, other than a 3-yearly change of batteries and we would recommend the system to other educational establishments”.
Laura Grainger from Luminite commented ‘We are conscious that, especially in the current climate, school budgets must be spent wisely and we were happy to supply advance demo units to the school in order for them to test thoroughly. A consideration for the TEACH Trust was that they could easily add units to the system if needed and ALERTEX allows them to do this.’
