Hundreds of false alarms at schools

POLICE are being called out hundreds of times to deal with false alarms in city high schools, it emerged today.

Officers have had to deal with 478 alarm calls to the city's 23 secondary schools alone over the course of two years and council bosses admitted the majority of them were false.

New figures released under freedom of information laws also reveal that between April 2008 and April this year, police have been called to deal with a variety of genuine calls ranging from firearms incidents and drugs misuse to theft and accidents.

Today's figures show officers in Edinburgh have visited Gracemount High School the most out of all the city's secondaries, with it racking up 112 call-outs in the past two years. However, 62 of the visits were for alarm calls.

Leith Academy received 100 visits from officers during the same period, while Craigmount High had 101 call-outs.

A spokeswoman for the council said in the majority of security alarm cases, police attended in the evening, when the schools were closed.

She said they were "mostly false alarms" such as doors or windows being left open.

However, she added that as of April this year, the first point of contact for these incidents was now the council, not police, in order to reduce the amount of wasted hours officers spend dealing with the incidents.

Tory education spokesman Councillor Cameron Rose said: "This is a waste of police time and also a waste of time for janitors and other school staff.

"It's an area of waste and I wonder whether it reflects a careless attitude which needs to be dealt with by management."

A council spokeswoman said: "We take security at our schools very seriously and police can attend schools for a range of reasons at any time of the day.

"All our schools have a great relationship with the police who work hard to educate pupils about crime and how to prevent it.

"In terms of the number of call-outs for school alarms - the council is now the first point of contact for these incidents and we have a control room which deals with this, cutting down on police call-out times."

A police spokesman added: "It should be made clear that these figures do not specifically relate to crimes that have been committed during school hours, or even on school property.

"Rather they relate to crimes that have taken place in or around school property, at various times of the day.

"We have dedicated Police School Link Officers based at schools around Edinburgh, whose remit is to work with pupils and staff in order to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour taking place within schools."