Does Martyn's Law require schools to sign visitors in?

Not in those words. But the statutory guidance expects a school to be able to account for people during a procedure, and suggests the incident response kit includes lists of who is on site. In practice that means a visitor and contractor record that someone is tasked with using.

Do staff need to be accounted for in an evacuation?

Yes. Registers cover pupils; nothing usually covers adults. The guidance treats staff, contractors and volunteers alike as people the procedures must protect, so the roll call needs a way of knowing which adults are in the building.

Visitors, contractors and the roll call

Whatever the procedure, it ends the same way: is everyone out, or in? For pupils, the register answers that. For the adults in the building, most schools cannot.

What the guidance expects

The statutory guidance does not say "keep a visitors' book". It says three things:

a school's procedures should include how people are accounted for
the incident response kit should hold up-to-date lists of who is on site
staff, contractors and volunteers are all people the procedures exist to protect

Taken together, that means someone must be able to say, at any moment, who is in the building, and check them off.

Where the paper book falls down

Most primaries have a signing-in book at the school office. In a real incident, three things go wrong with it:

Nobody is named to grab it, so it stays on the desk in a locked-down office.
It records arrivals better than departures, so it lists people who left an hour ago.
It says nothing about staff: the supply teacher, the peripatetic music teacher, the governor who popped in, the two lunchtime staff who came in early.

What good looks like

A record of who is on site right now, not just who arrived.
The office can read it from anywhere: on a phone at the assembly point, on a tablet in the safer area.
Visitors and contractors signed in and out at the door.
A way for staff to be counted, particularly those not on a class timetable.
A named person in each procedure who reconciles the list, and a deputy.
A habit of using it. A roll call practised in a drill is the only kind that works on the day.

Sign-in is also the easiest procedure to get staff behind, because it is something they do every day. The evacuation register becomes a by-product of it rather than a separate chore. That is the argument to make in the staff meeting: this is not about monitoring anyone. It is about being able to say "everyone is out" and mean it.

Where SchoolProof fits

SchoolProof includes visitor and staff sign-in for schools, with a live "on site now" view and a one-tap roll call that can be recorded as a drill. It is currently being tested with a small number of schools before it is switched on for everyone. It will be included in every subscription, not sold as an add-on.

Do this next

The free readiness check asks whether you could account for everyone on site within a few minutes, alongside the other things the Act expects.

Start the free readiness check