School Bell Lockdown Alert System

PA and Lockdown Alert System by Sound Innovations

The School Bell Lockdown Alert System, designed by us, incorporates a vast amount of unique, exclusive features.

In 2011, a newly built school had a list of requirements that were not met by the contractor for their session change system. They called in our Managing Director to assess the system. Consequently, he found that the system fell far short of meeting the school’s requirements, so he set about designing a superior one.

The result was the School Bell System (originally called the S-Cool Bell system, as it’s really cool!). It far exceeded the school’s requirements and has since been installed in hundreds of schools across the UK. The system has evolved with the ever-changing demands that the world of education has brought to us; it will fulfill every function you could possibly need from a school PA system, including new features such as Lockdown Alerts.

The system was a finalist at the BETT Awards 2017 in the category “ICT Innovator of the Year”. The system year on year has been added to and enhanced to meet the ongoing needs of education environments.

How does School Bell work for classroom changes?

 

It’s so easy to use! You have up to 8 zones (these can be for buildings or key stages). Simply select the zone, the date (or Monday – Friday), the time, and the mp3 you wish to play. Click the schedule button and you’re done! Simply repeat this process for all of your session changes. The mp3 can be anything you want, be it a song or a specific sound.

We do however advise that you stay away from sounds that are similar to fire alarms and alert tones when choosing your session change sounds. In this day and age, desensitizing children to emergency alarms would not be desirable.

What can the School Bell System play?
Any recorded music, song, poem, tone, bell or voice recordings as long as it’s a .mp3 file, and you can store thousands of them. However, we also supply each system with music and pre-recorded announcements, session change music, and sounds to make life easy.

Theme the alert sounds around terms or events!
You can easily change alert sounds any time you want, so you can introduce relevant music or sound effects. For example, you could use alerts that relate to the time of year or an event that is occurring in your school. This interaction can really add a spring into the steps of pupils, adding some fun variation to their daily routine.

The ability to reach every part of the school in seconds! 
Being able to make an announcement and locate or alert relevant people instantly can be a valuable asset, not just for day to day issues but also for safeguarding and strategy. The School Bell system allows you to make instant live announcements school-wide or to specific zones

Download the School Bell Software Manual v5

Why are the 8 zones important?

You might not necessarily want the same messages and session changes going school-wide. At times, you may wish to exclude certain areas from receiving notifications. Perhaps you have session change alerts during an exam that could potentially distract students. Our system allows for up to 8 separate, individually muteable zones. So, you can simply mute the alerts in your exam hall whilst the rest of the school runs as normal.

Can School Bell help create a school radio station?

These days many schools have school radio stations that help bring out the creativity of students and enhance their confidence, whilst providing an extracurricular activity that anyone can get stuck into! The possibilities are endless, from students producing advertisements for forthcoming events, through to spotlighting the next generation of broadcasters. We can connect the School Bell System to a radio station system.

Lockdown Alerts with School Bell

Lockdown Alert capabilities are included as standard with our School Bell System. The system offers easy access to 3 levels of alert: Full Lockdown, Partial Lockdown, and a thir

d for special circumstances.

Full Lockdown Alert is for the most serious instances where you need staff and pupils to take immediate action, due to a threat on your site.

Partial Lockdown Alert is for any disturbance or situation outside the school grounds, during which you want all staff and pupils back inside the building. For example, if a dangerous dog comes onto school grounds or pollution from a fire is heading your way.

Third Lockdown Alert is, unlike the first two, is not required by local authority guidance or NaCTSO. This alert mode is for special circumstances. For instance, we have schools that have issues with parents trying to collect students when a court order is in place. We’ve had a case where an inner-city school is near a rehabilitation center and they often have their clients going to the wrong reception to collect prescriptions. This alert can alert SLT or other staff of a known situation they need to attend.

Installation of a new School Bell System

The School Bell System runs via its own cabling. Our system includes Lockdown Alerts and a PA Tannoy microphone system that are both used for communication, including safeguarding around schools. If we were to use your wi-fi network, this would introduce a weak link in the system during network outages or maintenance. Many networks are already running at full capacity and adding extra systems to these is not advisable.

As a self-contained system, the School Bell system experiences limited downtime and has proved to be extremely reliable. We also offer UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) to allow the system to operate during a power cut. This means you may still communicate with the complete site or raise an alert.

Have we missed anything?
We hope not, but we are always keen to improve our system even further and would love to work with new clients to introduce additional functions.

For further details such as full product information, feature list, technical specification, and tender specification information please call our team on 01743 241997

FAQ: Can I buy the School Bell System anywhere else?

No the Sound Innovations School Bell System is only available from Sound Innovations Limited. The software that is the heart of the system has been developed in house and we do not license the software to third party contractors or companies.

Get in touch with us.