Oldbury Academy will not evacuate over hoax bomb calls

Oldbury Academy has been evacuated four times during the past three weeks. Acting headteacher Philip Shackleton said he will now only close his school if there is reason to believe the students and staff are in danger.

He said this was the best way to both ensure everyone was safe and minimise the disruption to lessons.

Mr Shackleton said the policy had always been to shut the school in Pound Road and send pupils home. But now any threats received will be immediately reported to police and bosses will await further information before evacuating. Parents were informed of the new rules, which followed guidance from police, at a meeting and the acting headteacher said they had been supportive.

Mr Shackleton said: "The first priority is to make sure the children and staff are safe and then to minimise the disruption to lessons."

"If we think think the threat is credible we will of course evacuate," he said, adding: "We're just not making that immediate decision to close the school."

Oldbury Academy already had a number of procedures in place to monitor security including 'locking down' the school every night and senior staff carrying out 'a complete sweep of the school' to check for anything suspicious each morning.

The Salvation Army and Barlow Homes Community Centre, both in Pound Road, and The Royal British Legion club in Windsor Road, have offered to help should the school need to be evacuated.

"I would like to thank our local community. All of these community centres have offered their venues for our students to go to." said Mr Shackleton.

The academy has been one of the institutions worst affected by the hoaxes, having been threatened four times. The school on Pound Road was first targeted on January 19 when it was one of four schools that closed for the day. It was evacuated twice the week after, with the most recent threat on Monday when it reopened shortly after being one of six schools threatened.

Police spokesman Billy Corrigan said the force had offered consistent advise and will only tell any premises to evacuate if there was 'a real, credible threat'.

"It's ultimately always their choice whether or not to evacuate. We would never tell any premises to evacuate unless there was a real, credible threat. Every time a school calls us we assess that, reassess it then grade the threats."

Twenty West Midlands schools have been targeted by the hoax calls. Two people have been arrested and one charged over separate copycat calls, but as yet no-one has been arrested for the majority of the threats.