Teachers at an independent school are to be told to wear Bluetooth wristbands switched on 24 hours-a-day to check who they have been in contact with on site.

The technology will allow Buckswood School to “immediately detect and isolate” staff and students who may be at risk of Covid-19 if there is any infection.

Staff will only be expected to wear the wristbands when they are on site. But for some tutors at the boarding school that will be 24 hours a day.

The 11-18 private secondary, in East Sussex, will be the first to use the new technology - named “Shield for Schools” - which will allow “real-time contact tracing of the entire school community”.

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The wristbands, which are mandatory for teachers and pupils alike, will be used to identify people who have come into contact with somebody at risk of Covid-19.

The bands will not be used to track people’s whereabouts within the school. But they interact with one another to detect whether staff and pupils are at risk, based on the contact they have had with others on site.

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Kevin Samson, Buckswood’s co-principal, said each band would be assigned a number, which will, in turn, be assigned a name. This will make it possible to trace the wristband back to an individual teacher or pupil.

He said the idea was to “minimise the impact on the school community” from Covid-19 outbreaks.

Teachers and pupils will be expected to wear the bands, “much as they might have to wear a lanyard identifying them as a member of staff or as a student at the school”, Mr Samson said.

He added that boarders should also keep them on out of normal school hours, in order to ensure that the system works. This will include both pupils and “resident tutors”.

“Let’s say Student A was in class and Student B came down with it, but Student A goes back to their dormitory and is then playing games or doing activities with the other students in their dormitory,” Mr Samson said.

“If they are not wearing it at that time, we are not sure who within the boarding community they may not have been with during the day.

“It’s then being able to say to the boarding house: ‘It’s actually only three of you in the boarding house here who need to be isolated for 14 days,’ and avoiding a house of 35 students [going into isolation].”

But Mr Samson said staff should not feel “Big Brother is watching me”, as the bands don’t track where people are at any given time: they only show “who is near to whom”.

“What we’re saying is, when you’re at school, it doesn’t show us where you are in school. It’s not going to say that Teacher X has spent, you know, one and a half hours in the staffroom. It’s just saying who is near to whom,” he said.

“And as they walk around the school, we’ll have tablets positioned in two or three locations that will suck the data out of each wristband as it goes past, so it will be able to update itself at different points within the day.”

Staff and students at Buckswood will begin wearing the Bluetooth wristbands from the first day of the autumn term.

The system follows three steps:

• Should a student or member of staff report feeling ill or have positive Covid-19 test results, the system administrator will be notified, log the data and the individual will be isolated.
• The wristband ID will be cross-checked with other wristband IDs on the Shield for Schools dashboard.
• The school will perform isolation, retesting and safety protocols, helping to protect the wider school community and minimise disruption to learning.

Tim Howarth, managing director for financial services for Fimatix, the company behind the system, said it would work 24/7.

Asked what happens outside of schools, for example, if staff need to leave the site, Mr Howarth said: “The system will work in conjunction with other track and trace solutions to cover out-of-school contacts.

“Day pupils, visitors and staff will rely on NHS Track and Trace outside of school boundaries.”

While the tech is starting out in independent boarding schools, it “will be available to roll out to other interested schools across the UK and around the world”, Fimatix said.

The company said another school had already confirmed that it was on board, and it is “talking to many others”. 

Mr Howarth said: “We created Shield for Schools to play a positive role in the management of risk and to give pupils, families and schools additional reassurance and peace of mind during these challenging times.

“By allowing real-time contact tracing of the entire school community, we’re helping to ensure that everything possible is being done to make the most of a Covid-19-free learning environment.”

Mr Samson added: “We believe that this technology provides a key component in our school’s ability to manage Covid-19, enabling us as a school to instantly identify and isolate students who have been in close contact with anyone who tests positive.

“Additionally, Shield for Schools is an extremely useful tool in being able to quickly provide important information to Public Health England and the NHS, should there be a need to track and trace individuals outside of our school community.

“It allows us to minimise wider isolation of staff and students, thus minimising the impact on education for all whilst at the same time providing an extra layer of reassurance for parents.”

Fimatix said the algorithm is designed by medical experts to comply with latest Public Health England guidance on social distancing.

Only the schools themselves will have access to, and manage, data relating to pupils and staff, the company said.