John Port School

Using Sentinel, John Port School in Derbyshire achieved major gains in teaching time and improved their control and knowledge of the whereabouts of students

The Sentinel system was installed at John Port for use by 1,600 pupils. They employ 95 robust, reliable swipe card terminals in classrooms and at entrances. Each pupil and staff member is given a coded identity card, which is passed through a magnetic swipe card reader on entering or leaving a control point.

The data, collected at a central PC, allows Sentinel to offer a number of useful facilities in real-time, including a quick search to find any individual in the school and an automatic print-out of the location of all pupils and staff in the event of fire or other alarms.

Powerful, automatic functions are provided to cut time-consuming administration such as register analysis, truancy and other reports. The system will also link into most school administration systems in addition to the I.M.P.A.C.T Cashless Catering System.

Sentinel represents a major step forward in schools safety and management. In John Port School the system saves a good deal of administration time which can be put back into teaching. After some initial scepticism the new routine has been welcomed by teachers and pupils. The Deputy Head at John Port says: “ Truancy isn’t a significant issue at this school; it’s the improved efficiency which is important. We’ve gained time, particularly at the start of afternoon school, and there’s a real saving over traditional register chores.” There have also been improvements in discipline. The system has a great deterrent effect and excuses for absence are now practically always genuine. “ The ability to locate pupils almost instantly, particularly seniors with syllabus options, has saved a lot of time on several occasions”, said the Deputy Head of John Port.

“We have absolutely no regrets about installing the system”, he continued “Radun have proved to be just a phone call away. When a freak, direct lightning strike caused the system to go down, they had it up and running again the next day.”

John Port is now one of the largest schools in the country with 13 teaching buildings spread over a large campus and over 150 card readers in classrooms. This means that all 2000 student and 200 staff register several times a day within 2 minutes which creates additional requirements that Sentinel has helped to solve.

These include: -

• Identifying late attendee to lessons: After actual truancy, this is next level of issues with attendance. With the size of the campus this area requires a strong management focus. It is disruptive to the class and the learning process and is normally very difficult to attain data. Sentinel provides the data without any additional requirement from Staff and Students.
• Eliminating wasted effort physically searching for Staff and Students on a large site: The Where Is facility pin-points not where they should be, but their exact location.
• Eliminating Mass Evacuations during Fire Alarm drills: Printouts for the relevant building is produced, at any convenient printer, of anyone actually in the building thus stopping the need for mass evacuations. This facility can also group buildings together to give fire zones relevant to the site. e.g. Upper and Lower Schools.
• Emergency classroom assistance: With the size of this campus, getting assistance to individual classrooms during any type of emergency is extremely difficult. The school discussed the concept of Call-Out Cards with Radun. We developed the facility then integrated into the Sentinel system for all their customers. Any staff member in any part of the school can swipe their card into a card reader and all users with the system on their PC will get a message with tone requesting assistance at that reader. Simple, but easy