School security
measures for reducing threats to people and property in schools
School security encompasses all measures taken to combat threats to people and property in education environments. One term connected to school security is school safety, which is defined as the sheltering of students from violence and bullying, as well as exposure to harmful elements such as drugs, guns and gang activity. Along with other public places, schools are at risk for invasion from outside as well as attacks from students or faculty because of the high traffic of potential assailants and availability of victims.
Safety threats
Shootings and bombings
In the US, as of January 2018, since 1990, at least 240 school shootings have occurred. School shootings have a 450% increase in the past 30 years, in which there were only 53 shootings. School bombings are less frequent at 22 in 2016, but according to the US Bomb Data Center, education related buildings are over twice as threatened than any other target. Over 74% of education related threats were middle schools, junior high, and high schools. Due to safety threats, during the 2013–2014 school year, reports say 93% of public schools lock or monitor doors and gates as a means of controlling access to the school; this is an 18% increase since the turn of the century.
Metal detectors are installed at the entrances of a small number of US schools to deter students from bringing metal weapons into schools. As of 2022, 2.4% of US schools had students go through metal detectors every day, and an additional 6.2% of schools sometimes used metal detectors for random checks.
“School security” enters the record as measures for reducing threats to people and property in schools. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what School, security and measures can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“School security” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, School, security and measures provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55648610. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018, 1990, 2016 and 2013.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “School security”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow School security primary sources, School security archive and School research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “School security”?
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “School security” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.