With schools increasingly forced to deal with the rise in vaping among young people, and the anti-social behaviour that can accompany it, Ecl-ips, a Worcestershire security and monitoring company, is offering a smart sensor to help them manage the problem.
Public health charity ASH, local authorities, local trading standards bodies have all raised concerns about vaping among young people with calls for greater government action to curb it. Meanwhile last year the school inspectorate, Ofsted, identified vaping as among the problems with at least one secondary school and one further education college. ASH has produced guidance for schools on how to tackle vaping as well as other resources to address youth vaping.
Public health advice is clear, if you haven’t smoked before you should not vape and the selling of vaping devices or e-cigarettes to anyone aged under 18 and buying vaping products for anyone under 18 are prohibited. However, local trading standards bodies have found evidence of selling of vapes to children and also had to dispose of illicit vapes which may have higher than the legal dose of nicotine or oversized tanks and cause even more harm if smoked by under-18s.
Ecl-ips installed four Halo Smart Sensors for Matthew Carpenter, Principal at Baxter College in Kidderminster after the school found that the increasing number of students vaping within its toilets was becoming a difficult issue to manage. Some pupils felt unable to enter the toilets due to the behaviour of others while more students asking to use the toilets within lessons arousing suspicions that vaping was taking place during these times.
The headteacher said: “The way vapes work in comparison to cigarettes allows them to be used quickly and the low-cost disposable ones are easily hidden or thrown away, so more difficult for staff to detect.”
The technology developed by the US manufacturer IPVideo Corporation means the HALO is the only smart sensor that can alert and differentiate between vaping, vaping with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC an ingredient of cannabis) and intentionally masking vaping by using aerosols to cover it up. The sensor is vandal resistant which means students cannot tamper with it to stop it working and detects abnormal noise levels, so also indicates aggression among students or other poor behaviour.
The device is connected to power and the internet through a single POE cable. Schools can then receive notifications of issues by email. Commenting on how the Halo Smart Sensors should be used Matthew said: “I would advise planning for how the system is going to be monitored and the subsequent action, reflecting these changes in the school’s behaviour policy.
“You will receive a significant number of alerts and need to be able to respond quickly. I would also recommend pairing the sensor with a CCTV camera near the entrance to the toilet so you can quickly identify students who were in the toilets and considering a wand-style metal detector to support checking coats and bags.”
Matthew said that the best thing about the smart sensors has been the impact they have had within the school with improved behaviour and an improvement in the environment for teaching and learning.
If you want more information about how we are supporting schools with monitoring and security please contact Nicky Ayers Sales & Marketing nicky@ecl-ips.com 01527 872000.