Schools and Universities

Schools and Universities  » Educational Visits - Good Practice, Risks and Hazards.

Educational Visits - Good Practice, Risks and Hazards.

A Head Teacher's Safety Management Toolkit Article. htttp://www.swaneducation.co.uk

Educational Visits - Good Practice, Risks and Hazards

by Paddy Swan

Horror stories about British teachers taking Educational

Visits and then being prosecuted for deaths seem always to

be with us.

We have some 60,000 schools in the UK and if each school

only does one educational visit a year this is still a lot

of visits. By the law of averages something will go wrong

somewhere sometime, but there have been about 4 prosecutions

of teachers over the last almost ten years. That is to say

that out of probably 1 million educational visits about 4

teachers have been prosecuted and only 3 have been found

guilty.

Manslaughter by gross negligence has been the charge which

has made UK teachers’ blood run cold and led one of our

teacher Unions to circularise all members with advice on

this topic.

The fact of the matter is that no teacher has ever been

prosecuted for following good practice and good practice for

educational visits has been laid out by the DfES and

published in Guidance on their website, The Health and

Safety Executive as regulators of UK health and safety have

referred to this Guidance and thus given their imprimatur to

what good practice actually is.

This article is about the underlying principles to put in

place good practice when a visit needs to be organised.

The key thing for any school to do is to ensure that a

competent Group Leader or Educational Visit Co-ordinator is

appointed. They need to be by the Headteacher and Governors

in writing. They also need to be competent not only, to run

a visit but also, to carry out a HIRA (Hazard Identification

Risk Assessment) for any proposed visit.

A HIRA is quite a specific matter in UK Health and Safety

Law and terms and this article aims to introduce you to the

concepts and some of the terminology, as well as giving you

some tools to carry out a Risk Assessment.

Before any visit all visit Hazards need to be identified and

Risks reduced.

What is a Hazard?

Simply put a hazard is anything that could cause harm.

For example;

•Uneven surfaces when mountain or fell

walking, slippery conditions caused by ice and snow.

•Children standing up in a moving minibus.

•Children falling into water.

•Hazards specific to a particular activity e.g skiing,

swimming, or almost any activity or sport.

How would a visit organiser know about hazards on a

site never visited or discussed with an experienced

colleague?

What is a Risk?

The risk is the likelihood that someone will be harmed by

the hazard.

On a visit, there may be many more hazards than you may

think and if you are acting as the EVC or as a single Group

Leader for a small school, you may not have personal

experience.

If you do not feel you know enough about a particular topic

seek competent help. A search of websites and links from

these can help you in this.

Steps must be taken to reduce the risk of any hazard causing

harm. This is done by removing or controlling the risk.

Controlling Risks

Generally it is better if the hazard can be removed and if

can’t be then it needs to be controlled.

For example, an instruction to children to remain seated in

a moving vehicle must be enforced, if seatbelts are not

fitted as standard.

The risk of children falling over if the vehicle has to

swerve or brake suddenly may be removed by the seatbelts or

reduced by controlling it by ensuring the children remain

seated.

This is a Control Measure.

The Control Measure is a method of reducing the risk if it

cannot be eliminated entirely.

If the hazard cannot be removed it should be possible to

eliminate, or substantially reduce the risk by providing

protection and isolating the person from the hazard by

providing protection e.g. a guard on a powered tool or

engine.

In other words, separate the hazard from the individual.

If separating the person from the hazard is not practicable,

the individual may be protected, for example, by wearing

seat belts in a Minibus.

The Visit Group Leader/ EVC will need to be aware of the

Hazards and Risks of the visit and will need to know how to

carry out a Hazard Identification Risk Assessment for any

visit or trip.

However, if you are unable to reduce risk to an acceptable

minimum by these means, you inform your head teacher

promptly.

If you have not the competence to identify hazards and

reduce risks for a particular activity seek help - some

useful websites may be found through a simple search and the

DfES Guide itself goes some way towards identifying specific

hazards

HIRA - the procedure for reducing risks

•Identify the Hazard

•Assess the Risk

•Institute necessary Control Measures

The above procedure is known as a HIRA - Hazard

Identification and Risk Assessment and it is the one to be

followed when completing Risk Assessments in the Workplace

or for carrying out a Risk Assessment for Visits.

Is the Action taken sufficient?

You must train yourself to recognise hazards and take steps

to eliminate them or to apply suitable control measures.

Absolute Safety

There is no such thing as absolute safety, hazards may be

fairly minor, an uneven surface , for example, but the risk

may be high and the outcomes, especially if the risk of a

trip is at the top of flight of metal or concrete stairs.

In fact the whole UK Health and Safety law is based around

the principle that you and the employer carry out your

duties "so far as is reasonably practicable".

This means that the duties on employers are not absolute

duties and a balance has to be struck between taking

precautions and the cost of those precautions.

This is why the law is amplified by Precedents,Approved

Codes of Practice (ACOPs) Codes and Guidances.

One explanation of the words "reasonably practicable" is

that such a duty is to be applied as far as is technically

possible or feasible when weighing the risks against the

costs of taking the measures necessary for averting the

risks.

There is always scope for argument about what is and is not

"reasonably practicable". But it is a fact that provided you

follow good practice there is no need to fear any personal

responsibility as a result of an accident.

The hazard of death by drowning during a visit to the local

swimming pool could be a major one but the risk may be low

because of supervision and flotation aids and trained First

Aiders with expertise in Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation

(CPR) on hand.

Equally, the hazard of tripping whilst walking between

demonstrations could be a minor one but the risk may be high

if children are allowed to run around in an uncontrolled

way.

All Teachers need to know something about Risk Assessment

and this is one of the major points of this article

highlighting how to look at Hazards and Risks as applied to

educational visits and trips.

Risk Assessment for Educational Visits - General Procedures

UK safety practice is laid down in Policies, Procedures,

Guidance and Regulations which require Visit Group Leaders,

Educational Visit CO-ordinators ,teachers and their

employers to take the following risk assessments and control

steps. The Group Leader will take primary responsibility

for reviewing and agreeing these for the specific

Educational Trip and Visit for which they may be appointed:

1.Identify the presence of a potential hazard.

2.Assess the risk to health and safety.

3.Eliminate the hazard if practicable.

4.If not practicable, reduce the risk by separating people

from it.

5.If this is not practicable, reduce the risk by protecting

the person.

6.Provide colleagues and pupils with information about health and

safety risks and training in the use of control measures and

equipment.

This can be easily summarised into a series of

steps:

Step One - Look for the Hazards

Step Two - Decide who might be harmed and how.

Step Three - Evaluate the risks and decide whether existing

precautions are sufficient or more needs to be done.

Step Four - Record your findings

Step Five - Review your assessment and decide whether you

need to revise it.

This is particularly important on visits

where conditions such as weather may change. This is

sometimes referred to as ongoing Risk Assessment, but in

fact it is simply a re-iteration of the review atge.

Hazards on Visits

The hazards for any Visit or Trip fall into three clear

areas which can be addressed to identify sources of hazard.

These are :-

i. Safer Physical Environment

ii. People/Procedures (Harm reduction/Incidents)

iii. External Impacts e.g Transportation or Weather

If you imagine a pupil on a skiing trip slipping on ice,

they may come to no harm, break a bone or, indeed, break

their neck.

If a school bus has a defect on the brakes there may be a

skid with no casualties, a minor accident or a major

accident causing death.

We need to recognise that hazard outcomes are largely

unpredictable and we can only progress by taking a “loss

prevention” approach where we look at expected outcomes and

the numbers which are likely to be affected.

The important point is that identification and control of

hazards has now become a legal management requirement (cf.

Management of Health and Safety Regulations - Regulation 4)

Today's Popular Articles

• Why Culinary Education

• May 20th Olga Brunner of A Good Daughter to Exhibit at Alzheimer’s Education Conference

and the types of hazard which we need to address in school

and on school visits include issues set out under the DfES

Guidances including Guidances on Visits- 1998).

For ease of approach hazards may be classified by the

following categories :-

Class "A" Hazard A condition or practice likely to cause

permanent disability, loss of life or body part (e.g. an

eye).

Many visit based incidents including road traffic accidents

and involving water based activities have been proven to

fall into this category.

A condition or practice likely to cause extensive loss of

structure, equipment or material (typically hazards from

fire, electricity and machines).

For example, flammables being stored incorrectly and near

sources of ignition.

Class "B" Hazard

A condition or practice likely to cause serious injury or

illness (resulting in temporary disability) or property

damage that disrupts, but is less severe than Class "A",

e.g. slippery conditions on a skiing holiday or a broken

tread at the top of the stairs in a hotel.

Class "C" Hazard

A condition or practice likely to cause minor

(non-disabling) injury or illness, or non-disruptive

property damage, e.g. build-up of clutter in a room being

used for teaching or as a base during an activity holiday.

Measuring Risk

Risk can be understood as the measure of Probability and

Hazard.

Probability of Occurrence

Once you have considered what could happen, you should ask

yourself "how often?" and the simple categories are :-

Frequent Probability Occasional

Probability Rare Probability

The notion of frequency will vary depending on the activity

and might be considered in :- • Number of People. • Hours

in contact with pupils or duration of visit Using both the

ideas of Hazard and Occurrence the following table can be

created :-

Minor Hazard - C 3 2 1

Serious Hazard - B 7 5 4

Major Hazard - A 9 8 6

Frequency (High) (Low) (Moderate)

From this table and approach a HIRA may be

produced which has an indication of seriousness of a

potential Risk and gives the Group Leader/EVC a method of

prioritising Risk Reduction.

Recording your HIRAs

The method set out in the previous section allows a set of

priorities to be drawn up and resources, financial or human,

set accordingly.

Obviously, major hazards with high frequency should be given

the highest level of attention. Any item or area scoring 6

or above should be highlighted for specific attention and a

copy of the Assessment should be passed to either the school

EVC or the Headteacher on completion.

You will find Specific Hazard and Risk Assessment forms for

Visits and Trips contained within the DfES Guidance for

Visits at www.dfes.gov.uk.

This document gives fuller listings on the particular hazard

and risks to be addressed during planning for visits.

If it wasn’t written down - it didn’t happen.

Any staff involved in an incident should always make notes

or fill out an incident/ casualty report on any event

attended, no matter how minor.

Proper records will help you to recall the incident if you

are ever asked about it at a later stage. The responsibility

is greater if you have a role as a Group Leader or a teacher

first aider. attending an incident or a teacher

administering medicines to a pupil.

Records may be used in a court, so ensure that your report

or notes are accurate, factual, contain all relevant

information, and are based on observations rather than

opinions.

Your role as a Group Leader on any visit makes it important

that all your actions are recorded, especially as these

actions pertain to your HIRA.

When preparing any report some general guidelines should be

followed:

•Use ink only.

•Any corrections should be crossed out with a

single line and initialled. Do not use correction fluid to

correct any mistakes.

•Sign and date the record.

•The information should be kept confidential, and should only be

accessed by authorised people.

•In any medical incident, a copy of any report,

especially of any treatment at site,should be also sent

to the A&E Department at the hospital with the patient.

A Final Word

A prosecution is only made in exceptional circumstances

where a Police and HSE Investigations show elements of gross

negligence so the advice to follow the simple rules of good

practice will keep you secure. Remember no one has ever been

prosecuted for following good safety practice.

About the Author

Dr.Paddy Swan is a qualified teacher with senior management experiencein UK schools and colleges. He has almost 30 years experience in developing some 100 Safe Systems of Work training solutions for industrial clients. Paddy is the author of School Basic Safety for Classroom and Support staff for UK schools and the Headteacher's Safety Managment Toolkit These may be seen at http://www.swaneducation.co.uk