After being hit badly by the loss of school equipment, suppliers and school buyers alike are more aware of the issues they must tackle in order to ensure their products stay in the classroom. Becta have issued guidelines on many factors to aid schools protect their equipment such as simple things like closing blinds and curtains, locking doors, always activating alarms and turning off the equipment to avoid tempting opportunist thieves. More advanced security measures including Etching the product (marking with a unique code to the school) which allows any recovered items to be returned to schools, caging products which many suppliers offer as part of their package and allows the projector arm to be locked into the roof space or against a wall. This can act as a great deterrent however; persistent thieves can actually cause significant structural damage if they manage to break into the cage.
IP security has been installed with success at many schools both to protect equipment, staff and students. This solutions, although costly, has had a big positive impact on the school community and if any problems are flagged up, alarms can be activated at a central centre to alert school leavers and the police. Within the next few pages are the latest AVP products available to schools and additional security information.
