There’s lots of things you might expect to see on a Friday morning in school: tired students looking forward to the weekend, even more tired teachers also looking forward to the weekend. However, something that no one expects to make an appearance is a wild fox. 

 

On Friday morning, October 15, a fox was spotted scurrying running around inside of Tiffin Boys School in Kingston. A quick-thinking member of the site team, who had been unlocking the school that morning, managed to herd it into a maths classroom. Since the school was beginning to open up for students, they were left with the problem of how to get the fox safely out of the school – without causing any disturbances to students and staff. 

 

With the help of a sixth former who stood outside the classroom (ensuring that nothing and no one of the four-legged variety went in or out), both the fox and the students were kept safe. The sixth former, on prefecting duty, said that she was ‘originally monitoring year seven students in the playground’ but was called two minutes in to her duty to help ‘guard’ the classroom that the fox was stuck in and ensure students and staff alike kept calm and quiet when walking by the room. 

 

The picture above – taken from a safe distance behind the door and as a result is slightly blurry – shows how the fox sat for the 30 minutes while she was standing outside the classroom. The sixth former said that “the whole time I was there it did not move from its spot onto of the cupboard but just stared at the door!” 

 

Geography teacher Mr Brittain, who also helped deal with the incident, said that ‘in 14 years of teaching at Tiffin it was the most excited I’ve been walking into a maths room’. 

 

After a short while, the site team at Tiffin were able to set up an easy and secure way to get the fox out of the classroom and safely get it out of the school. Fortunately, all wildlife, students and staff ended the morning in the right classrooms, or back to the wild in the case of the fox!