Highbridge’s King Alfred School is to become a training centre for Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s Dog Training Unit.
As a result of the positive relationship that the school has with local police, the school was approached by the police’s Dog Training Unit and has agreed to become an outreach training centre for the search dog team.
This will involve the school site being used for training the dogs, mainly in the evenings, weekends and school holidays, although once a month the dogs will spend an afternoon in the school.
The dogs are trained to search premises, vehicles and open spaces and dog trainer PC Lee Webb said that “the school provides an excellent facility for the dogs”.
Headteacher Andy Owen told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “We are delighted to build on our strong relationships with the police and to act as a training base for the search dog unit.”
“As a school we will benefit through police contributions to assemblies and to the curriculum especially our sixth form BTEC course in Public Services which we are launching in September.”
He added: “The presence of the search dogs will also act as a deterrent. We are unapologetic in that we have a zero-tolerance policy on drugs and that anyone bringing illegal substances onto the school site will be dealt with most severely.”
Pictured: Andy Owen, Headteacher, with PC Lee Webb, police dog trainer, and Jake, a search dog
