Recent Posts
The annual bidding round of funding has been announced for eligible academies, sixth form colleges and voluntary schools to apply for Condition Improvement Funding (CIF) for 2025 to 2026. The deadline for submissions is 17th December 2024 so schools should act fast. Schools will be advised of the outcome of their application by May 2025.
CIF’s core priority is to support condition projects, and the focus of the fund is to keep school and college buildings safe and in good working order. The highest priority is given to projects that address compliance and health and safety issues. The fund stands at more than £400 million and supported projects can include the installation of lockdown protection systems.
For further information on the Fund and to register to apply please refer to https://www.gov.uk/guidance/condition-improvement-fund
WHAT IS ALERTEX LOCKDOWN?
In line with Ofsted guidelines, schools must demonstrate that their LOCKDOWN alert sounds distinct to their FIRE alert as one means stay inside and find a place of safety whilst the other means evacuate the building. A school might go into lockdown for any number of reasons and Alertex units not only sound distinct to a fire alert, but with their blue flashing beacon, look different. If schools prefer to air a lockdown message, the Alertex range includes an annunciator with a library of standard messages or the school can record their own. You can mix annunciators with sounder/beacons where certain areas of a school such as SEND locations or nurseries may respond better to a message or music rather than a sounder.
All units are battery powered so can be quickly installed in the optimal place for best coverage for an efficient and coordinated response. With a long transmission range, when one Alertex unit is activated, it will trigger all other Alertex devices in range to provide a site wide alert. The Alertex portal enables schools to see which unit has been triggered and has a number of reporting functions such as low battery.