Moorland School, founded 1931, is a thriving co-educational day and boarding school located in the historic town of Clitheroe.  Set in extensive grounds in the picturesque Ribble Valley the school ensures seamless education from 2 to 16 years and provides consistency of learning and pastoral care offering day pupils and boarders the opportunity to settle in one place through to GCSE level.

As the school caters for a wide age group there is a real need to ensure efficient security for pupils, staff and equipment and this is heightened further by the numerous school buildings located on the impressive 15 acre site.  As well as being a high performance school it also has boarders’ onsite and this presents a unique challenge for security and safeguarding people and property.

The challenge of allowing access throughout the school, whilst maintaining security was becoming increasingly difficult on a day to day basis due to the large number of keys that were necessary.  As the school continues to grow, particularly with plans to provide a 6th form college in the summer of 2012 the problem is only going to escalate. The additional pressures of ensuring dormitories cannot be accessed by visitors, unauthorised staff and pupils heightened the challenge.

With security high on the agenda Moorland School’s Headteacher Jonathan Harrison looked to BSB Electronics to provide an efficient, cost effective and manageable solution to it's access control and security needs.
                                  
After a survey of the site and an audit of how access should be managed and monitored to ensure safety for pupils, staff and equipment BSB's class leading Progeny online P3 system was chosen.

P3 online was selected for several reasons; one of the key features is the system’s ability to grow according to the application needs. It is efficient and cost-effective and in conjunction with the hugely popular Crystal readers allows access via a number of mechanisms ideally suited to a school such as Moorland. 

P3 online also offers many superior technical features such as 3 methods of connectivity - USB to a server computer; LAN/WAN making use of an existing data network; and GPRS for difficult to reach applications.  The P3 access controller is designed with flexibility in mind. It can be programmed to function both stand- alone and from a PC and allows small systems to grow, from one door to 65,000 doors.  P3 online uses Doors Enterprise software and two versions are available - Doors Enterprise Software standard or Doors Enterprise software professional.  The latest release, version 7 which is utilised by the school includes many additional features including Photo ID card printing, time sheet, simplified user interface, Progeny Express links, custom database fields and new help wizards.

Currently over 60 doors are being managed by the system and access is achieved via a combination of sticky dots, key fobs, cards and ID badges.  As well as the teaching staff and school management being able to freely move throughout the school using these methods all students have been equipped with an entry card thus improving access throughout the school and helping to increase efficiency of movement equating to more time spent in the class room.
                                                   
The system manages and monitors access in the nursery, preschool, junior and senior school, sports hall, accommodation areas for the boarders and all of the other buildings and rooms throughout the school including the school's state of the art sports hall and complex.

Intelligent programming has been built into the management of the access throughout the school such as time zone locks and automatic door locking at certain times of the day.

The installation of the system was undertaken by Ellison Security and they worked very closely with the technical team at BSB to ensure a smooth and efficient installation. The installation was carried out during term time with no disruption to the school day and according to pre-agreed timescales.

Commenting on the success of the P3 online system installation at Moorland School, Ian Bend, BSB's Technical Director said 'Moorland School were looking for an efficient and cost effective solution to manage access throughout the school, particularly when school security is high on the agenda for both teachers and parents alike. P3 online was the perfect solution because as well as being highly efficient and cost effective it can grow with the school's requirements, so over time the system can cater for extra doors as they become necessary.'

The new access control system has been hugely successful for the school and helps safe guard the schools most important assets, the pupils and teachers, as well as protecting property and building from unauthorised access.

Jonathan Harrison, Head Teacher at Moorland School has been delighted with the installation, commenting on the P3 online system Jonathan said “students and house parents have all commented that they feel safe, and that their belongings and personal space is far more protected than before.  The P3 system allows the senior leadership team to track students and staff across the school site, and we are planning to embed the system into our school attendance policy, as the software used by the system allows detailed reports to be produced, such as time in and time out” Jonathan went onto say that he feels comfortable in the knowledge that the schools most valuable assets are protected “safeguarding children is our greatest responsibility and therefore our greatest risk.  I have embedded the Progeny access control system as our first line of defence in the safeguarding and protection of the children and adults within our community.”