On 13 March 1996, 43-year-old, Thomas Hamilton walked into Dunblane Primary School. He killed sixteen pupils and one teacher, injured fifteen others, and then killed himself. It remains one of the darkest days in the history of UK education.
Since then, we have not seen an attack of that scale on a school in mainland United Kingdom. Many people take comfort in that. I do not. I believe our relative safety has been based on circumstance rather than certainty. The national intelligence picture has been clear for some time. A terrorist ‘attack’ is considered highly likely. We can all see how extremism, polarisation and grievance motivated behaviours are rising across society. In my mind, this places our schools and colleges in a heightened state of risk.
In November, I visited Texas and spent time with a number of education partners. What struck me most was not fear or fatalism. It was readiness. Schools in the United States undertake regular, structured and challenging emergency drills. Their staff know exactly how to respond. Their leadership teams understand command structures. Their communication protocols are rehearsed. Given that the US has recorded more than two hundred school shooting type incidents since 2020, you would expect them to have built a culture of preparedness.
But in the United Kingdom, we too often sit back and hope it would not happen here. We rely on historical luck rather than operational planning. We continue to push the safeguarding mantra of adopting the mindset of it could happen here. It begs a serious question. Why are we not applying that same principle to emergency incident preparedness.
In April 2025, the Government published new guidance on security and preparedness in the education sector. It offered clearer direction than we have had before. It began to move the system towards a place where security culture is recognised as part of organisational safeguarding rather than an optional extra. Yet guidance alone does not build capability. Culture is created through leadership, rehearsal and accountability.
Since leaving my role as an Executive Safeguarding Director at a national multi academy trust, I have spoken with schools, colleges and trust boards across the country. What I have seen is a pattern. Leaders who are committed, passionate and skilled, but under prepared for the scale and complexity of a real emergency. Leaders who have robust safeguarding systems, but limited experience in major incident command and crisis preparedness. Schools have detailed continuity plans, but no lived experience of what those plans feel like under pressure.
Most schools have continuity or critical incident plans, but too many of these documents are outdated. They are one hundred page manuals, printed years ago, sitting in fading red folders on a shelf. They are rarely rehearsed and often unknown to the very leaders who would rely on them in an emergency. This creates significant exposure for leadership teams. In a public inquiry, it would be entirely reasonable for a barrister to ask a headteacher why they did or did not act in line with their own policy. They could be asked, ‘headteacher, when did you last exercise this plan, as required on page X, paragraph X’. The uncomfortable truth is that our sector does not consider these risks in the same way our blue light colleagues do. The only reason this gap has not been tested in a courtroom is because we have not yet faced a major incident of scale within a UK school. Leaders cannot wait for that moment to realise their plans were never fit for purpose.
That gap matters. In an emergency, leadership does not rise to the occasion. It falls to its level of training. This is why I now focus so much of my work on guiding executive and senior leadership teams through my framework for major incident response. React. Respond. Communicate. Recover. It gives leaders a structure they can rely on when circumstances are chaotic and time is short. It brings clarity to decision making. It places safeguarding and strategic command into the same coherent system.
I believe academy trusts have a moral, strategic and legal responsibility to exercise their emergency plans regularly. Not a tabletop once every few years, but meaningful, scenario based practice that tests leadership, communication, decision making and recovery planning. An incident on school grounds, involving children and staff, is one of the most demanding situations any leader could face. The preparation must reflect that gravity.
The sector has never been more stretched. Workload is high. Budgets are tight. Risk is increasing. Which is exactly why preparedness cannot be postponed. The schools that prepare now are the schools that will protect their communities when it matters most.
If we want a system that is genuinely prepared, we must recognise that schools and trusts cannot shoulder this burden alone. Emergency preparedness requires time, training, expertise and the right infrastructure. I believe the Government should allocate dedicated funding for schools to strengthen their security culture and major incident capabilities. This should not be seen as an optional enhancement. It is a core part of keeping children safe in a world where risks are evolving faster than policy. With appropriate investment, we can move from a position of hopeful complacency to one of confident readiness.
Emergency preparedness is safeguarding. Leadership teams must start treating it with the same seriousness. The time to practise is before the incident, not during it. The time to build confidence is now.
Contact us now, to learn more about how EduShield can support you, in developing effective Major Incident plans, and leadership resilience and expertise in responding to a crisis, when the ‘worst-case scenario, becomes reality’