Two pest control measures that school headmasters should take
Posted on: 18 February 2020
A pest outbreak in a school can disrupt lessons and scheduled exams and can put the teachers, admin staff and students at risk of harm. Because of this, school headmasters should try to do everything they can to prevent such outbreaks. Here are two pest control measures that these professionals can take.
They should insist that students keep their lockers clean and should do spot checks of the lockers on a regular basis
One of the main tips that pest control companies give their clients is to never leave old food scraps lying around their properties because these scraps will inevitably attract a wide range of hungry pests. This is easy advice to follow in most of the areas of a school where food is eaten (such as the playground or canteen) because any old bread crusts, crumbs and other food debris that students drop in these areas during their lunches can easily be spotted and swept up by the school's cleaners.
However, the leftover sandwiches and crisps or half-eaten chocolate bars that many students stuff into their lockers can often end up sitting in these storage areas for weeks on end. Because the cleaners cannot access these lockers each day, there is no way for them to remove this food debris before it draws pests onto the school grounds. This can result in these whiffy, unsanitary lockers causing an invasion of pests that can only be wiped out via a major intervention by pest control experts.
One measure that school headmasters can take if they're concerned about this is insisting that each student thoroughly clean out their locker regularly. To ensure that the students actually obey this rule, the headmaster might need to do spot checks of the lockers on a regular basis and then give detention to students who are found to have left rotting food in their lockers (or alternatively, they could reward students who have kept their lockers spotlessly clean).
They should strongly discourage students from feeding the fluffy, cute pests that enter the school grounds
Not everyone is afraid of or disgusted by all types of pests. Schoolchildren, in particular, might find the slightly fluffier, cute-looking pests, such as possums and mice, quite endearing. Because of this, there is a chance that some students might accidentally encourage pests to invade a school by trying to feed any creatures that they notice roaming on the grounds.
If the headmaster suspects any of their students of doing this, they should take steps to discourage this behaviour before it leads to them having to use a pest control service. This might mean making daily announcements, via the school's intercom, in which they remind students not to do this, assigning teachers to monitor the students more closely when they're outdoors and giving detentions to those that are found feeding potential pests.
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