SMART Response Toolkit Launch

Why We Are Launching the Free SMART Response Toolkit to Tackle School Lockdowns?

As the school lockdown crisis deepens across the UK, we have decided to share our complete toolkit freely with the sector to help address the issue directly.

Just days into the autumn term, schools across the country faced disruption from perceived security threats. On Friday 4 September, the majority of secondary schools in Liverpool entered lockdown following malicious email threats. Merseyside Police quickly determined these were coordinated hoaxes requiring no site closures, yet several schools still felt forced to lock down. It was not an isolated incident.

This time last year, we supported the Schools Week investigation that first brought this issue to light, revealing that schools educating nearly 100,000 pupils had experienced lockdowns. In May 2026, TES reported on the growing crisis. Since then, the situation has only deteriorated.

There is still no statutory requirement to report lockdowns, meaning the true scale remains unknown. However, our internal tracking of reported incidents shows that not a week passes without a disruption. Existing non-statutory guidance remains fundamentally binary—an all-or-nothing approach that forces headteachers into high-stakes decisions with minimal room for a measured, proportionate response.

We know the pressure firsthand. Before developing SMART Response, one of our own schools reacted disproportionately to an incident simply because we adhered rigidly to that binary national guidance. We developed this framework so neither our schools nor any others have to rely on blunt-instrument measures during manageable situations.

Full lockdowns have real consequences: they cause sharp distress to pupils, staff, and parents, and they waste instructional time. While there are critical moments where a complete lockdown is essential, those occasions are rare.

Furthermore, with the introduction of Martyn’s Law, commercial vendors are increasingly capitalising on compliance anxiety to sell expensive systems. We believe safety guidance should not come with an invoice. The SMART Response framework addresses these requirements and is entirely free.

Following practical sessions with more than 200 schools and trusts, we have made the complete SMART Response Toolkit available online as an end-to-end operational guide.

Included in the toolkit:

• Organisational Risk & Readiness Toolkit: For assessing baseline vulnerabilities across your sites.
• Readiness Self-Assessment Toolkit: An internal audit framework for emergency preparedness.
• Model and Recovery Toolkit: Clear operational protocols for managing and recovering from an incident.
• RAMP Analysis Report Template: A structured framework for post-incident review and refinement.

The toolkit replaces all-or-nothing panic with an adaptable, tiered response based on actual risk levels.