School locked down after safety alert

KANTOR KING Solomon High School in Redbridge locked down students at the end of the school day on Monday after learning of a threat to their safety.

In a letter to parents on Tuesday, headteacher Hannele Reece explained that the school had acted on “intelligence from two separate sources that there would be a threat to the safety of our students at the end of the school day”.

With little time to make a decision and after consultations with police and the CST, she had instigated “invacuation protocols to ensure children were safe in school”.

That gave time to gain an “increased police presence on the street” and also to secure a police dispersal order, “which meant that any person simply ‘hanging around’ would be legally required to move on”.

By using an alternative gate and staggering the departure of the students, the school was able to take them away “from the location of the threat”.

A number of children from local schools have been the victim of robbery or assaults in what KKSHS headteacher said had been an “increase in crime” in the vicinity.

After the lockdown, Ms Reece warned parents not to allow their children to hang around the nearby high street after school, “where a combination of the pandemic, increased social deprivation and the reduced capacity of alternative education have led to an increase in crime”.

One parent said it was the first time they’d experienced anything like this in the two years that their child has been a student and that it was “unusual for a school like Kantor King Solomon, because of the reputation it has for tight security”.

Last week, the KKSHS head convened a meeting of local school heads and safer schools police representatives to discuss the problem.

She told the JC that she believed the dispersal order would remain in force for the rest of the week and that police were considering increasing stop and search powers.

“This was a one-off incident and the most challenging we have experienced this year,” she told the JC. “However it has come from a combination of inappropriate use of social media by those keen to exploit our most vulnerable and an increase in crime in the local area.

“Unfortunately, a small number of our students — and those from other local schools — have been victims of robbery in the local area and there have been three serious assaults on our students by a group of negative influences that appear to be gaining increasing confidence on the high street.” Monday’s incident was “not terror-related or antisemitic in nature”, she said.