ArticlesReader.com Menu
Newest Articles
Most Viewed Articles
ArticlesReader.com RSS
Submit Article
Login
Signup
Search the articles

Articles Main Categories
Advice
Animals
Automobiles
Business
Career
Communications
Computer Programming
Computers
Entertainment
Environment
Family
Fashion
Finance
Food
Health & Medical
Home & Garden
Humor
Internet Business
Internet Marketing
Legal
Leisure & Recreation
Marketing
Other
Politics
Reference & Education
Religion
Self Improvement
Sports
Technology & Science
Travel
Writing
Subscribe
Receive alert message from us when new articles submitted to our site for free.

Enter your name

Enter your email

Syndicate

















Related Products
Home::Reference & Education

Enforcing School Safety In The UK.

Author : Paddy Swan
"A Headteacher's Safety Management Toolkit Article"



The Health and Safety Executive(HSE) as the body responsible for enforcing safety laws in our schools believes that up to 80% of accidents and incidents can be attributed to what they are calling now “Human Factors”. An indication of how Human Factors integrate with the HSE’s Regulatory function can be seen in the where they emphasise such as contributory factors. The list below shows where HSE have identified Human Factors as problems in priority areas for their action.This list is extracted from the HSC’s Strategic Plan to 2010 and beyond andappears on HSE's Human Factors website.



* Prevention of musculoskeletal disorders and manual handling injuries

* Management of work-related stress

* Preventing falls from height

* Preventing slips and trips

* Preventing workplace transport accidents

* Human factors in design (e.g. alarm handling in control rooms, vehicle cab design etc)

* The design and effectiveness of procedures

* Human reliability – human error and systems failures e.g. maintenance error

* Assessing organisational change and its implications

* Effects of organisational culture

* Communications and their effects on health and safety

* Staffing levels and workload

* Fatigue from working patterns - shiftwork and overtime

* Training and competence



You may wonder why I've started off with Human Factors but just look at this list again.



HSE never rush into enforcement and making prosecutions without informing and reinforming the public.



Now add up all the functions where management can make improvements on what HSE say is 80% of

accidents and where their priority areas are.



Got it?



What this tells us is where HSE will be focusing over the next period of time - managing safety.



This is confirmed by work which I have done on Head teacher's Safety Management Toolkit user’s behalf by revisiting HSE’s Database of Enforcement and this and a subsequent article gives information and analyses the information.



You can see information on this Toolkit and get access to the Analysis at http://www.swaneducation.worksites.com



This article looks at the raw data and makes some comments and observations on Enforcing School Safety.To be able to do this I have gone through HSE databases for the last 5 years and extracted all the Education related Enforcement actions.



These include :



Enforcement Orders



These are orders issued by Inspectors to:



Prohibit an unsafe action or activity either immediately or within a specified time frame,(Prohibition Notice)



Or,



Improve an unsafe activity or condition again within a time frame.(Improvement Notice)



These orders are the major part of HSE’s enforcement activity;for example there were 214 Orders made against schools and employers over the time period of the Database,(approx. 5 years) whilst there were only 34 prosecutions.



Enforcement Notices are Orders and need to be taken very seriously by anyone who gets one as HSE will prosecute if a Notice is ignored.



Ignoring an Enforcement Notice is actually given as a criterion for prosecution in their Enforcement Policy document.



Let us just look at what the situation actually is in schools as regards numbers of prosecutions and notices.



Prosecutions



In 2004/5 there were 712 prosecutions in total made by HSE in which they secured about 95% success of conviction.



The total number of prosecutions over the time frame for the HSE Database is just over 4000, which shows that schools and education with 34 prosecutions account for less than 1% of all prosecutions.



However, some extremely high profile cases from the education sector do not appear on HSE’s database.



This is always the case for any work related death which would be prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution(England and Wales) or the Procurator Fiscal(Scotland).



Thus, a teacher prosecuted for a death occurring on a school trip falls outside HSE’s database. However,they have reported two prosecutions where children have been injured on trips and HSE has followed the incident up with a prosecution. One of these was a prosecution of both the Employer(Council) and the Head teacher.



Looking at the actual figures of breaches involved in prosecutions gives us some indication of where actions are occurring now and later we shall look at the breaches involved in enforcement orders which may give us a clue to future actions.



HSE reports Breaches against each prosecution or notice. A Breach indicates the specific law(s) or regulation(s) which is cited in relation to the offence.



I have indicated the singular and plural above because one offence can breach several laws and regulations and HSE will report all the breaches against the offence.



Prosecutions



Primary Schools - Total 16



Secondary Schools - Total 18



Breaches in Primary Schools



HASAW Act Sect 2 - 3

HASAW Act Sect 3 - 6

Management of H&S Regs 4

Electricity at Work 1

Construction Design & Maint Regs 1

Construction H&S Regs 1

Gas Safety Inst &Use Regs

Workplace (H&S) regs

Control of Asbestos Regs



Breaches in Secondary Schools



HASAW Act Sect 2 - 3

HASAW Act Sect 3 - 10

Management of H&S Regs 4

Electricity at Work

Construction Design & Maint Regs

Construction H&S Regs 1

Gas Safety Inst &Use Regs 1

Workplace (H&S) regs 1

Control of Asbestos Regs 6



If you check the figures above the secondary figures do not add up to 18. This is because, as I explained above, often more than one breach is involved in an offence or a enforcement notice.



All Enforcement Notices in Schools



Primary Schools Total 77

Secondary Schools Total 137



Improvement Notices



Primary School Total 63

Secondary School Total 102



Prohibition Notices



Primary Schools Total 14

Secondary Schools Total 35



Made up of Breaches(Primary Schools)



HASAW Act Sect 2 38

HASAW Act Sect 3 41

Management of H&S Regs 42

Electricity at Work 6

Construction Design & Maint 1

COSHH 4

Prov&Use of Work Equipment 4

Manual Handling 3

Workplace (H&S) regs 26

Control of Asbestos Regs 7



This may not mean a lot to a non- safety professional but we can look at this another way.



What breaches occur in small numbers?



Well it appears to me that emphasis on CDM, COSHH and Manual Handling must have been dealt with fairly well by schools.



Alternatively relatively few accidents may have happened to be reported under the RIDDORs Regulations i.e there may have been accidents or incidents but not frequent or serious enough to appear on the HSE radar.



What isn’t there at all?



There are absolutely no Display Screen Equipment Regulations notices let alone any prosecutions. I think most of us would not be too surprised not to see any references to the Personal Protective Equipment Regulations or those covering Noise. However, since there has been so much emphasis on DSE Regs and schools are now crammed with PCs and ICT it seems that DSE Regs are not high on HSE’s priorities.



NB this does not mean there will never be enforcement and there is a requirement for a Risk Assessment to be carried out against these Regulations even if the RA says minimal or no significant risk and Action: No action!



What is there a lot of notices issued for?



Health and Safety at Work Act Sections 2 & 3 are “catch all” breaches and essentially Section 2 says “not ensuring employees safety” and Section 3 “not ensuring the safety of others(non employeesi.e pupils and visitors/contractors)”.



The largest number of notices arise around the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. This is relatively new and the focus is to make sure that dutyholders manage safety.This is where there is likely to be increasing emphasis for the future.



There are also 26 notices around breaches of the Workplace(H&S) Regulations. This can be partly explained by a HSE initiative started in Kent to ensure regulation of site traffic and that pedestrians were separated from it.



So, quite a few of these Workplace Regs breaches are about site traffic, school buses whilst others are about unsafe structures in the school.



Comments on Enforcement



As I indicated above we can get inside the mind of HSE by looking at their Plans and Policies.



They quite openly tell us that:



a) Enforcement will be used to drive Plans and Policy.

b) Enforcement will be targeted at the most serious risks.

c) Enforcement will be targeted to improve standards.

d) Their evidence shows and confirms that enforcement is an effective motivator and deterrent.

e) They believe that enforcement plays an important role in securing compliance.

f) That enforcement in the form of prosecutions comes about mainly from investigations into reports received on serious incidents.(about 90 -95%)



We'll look at actual examples of all these in another article and see what specific offences are most and least common and what other lessons we can learned to maintain schools as safe learning environments and to ensure the health and safety of our children and staff.


Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com





Paddy Swan is a qualified teacher with senior management experience and also has almost 25 years safety experience in industry. He runs Swan Education which is an Accredited Centre of the College of Teachers. Open Learning materials for the College’s Certificate of Educational Studies in School Safety (COES) at swaneducation.workzsites.com





Spam emails More free articles

Related articles


  1. Intelligence Issues in Children
  2. The Process of Learning in Children
  3. Memory and Attention in Children
  4. Non-Traditional Learning, Online Degrees
  5. Getting Your Online Degree
  6. How To Get An Online Degree
  7. Learn Online and Get An Online Degree
  8. Limitations Of Distance Learning
  9. Picking A Good Online Degree Program
  10. Positives Of Distance Learning
  11. Signs of an Online Degree Scam
  12. Successful distance learning
  13. The ABC's Of Distance Learning
  14. The Birth Of Distance Learning
  15. The Growth Of Distance Learning
  16. The Many Freedoms Of Distance Learning
  17. Mobile learning - an alternative worth considering
  18. Student Launches Website to quit university
  19. Earning Your Associate's Degree Online
  20. Pepsin, What Is It?
  21. Funding A College Education: Where To Start
  22. Non-Traditional College Education
  23. Tips To Follow Before You Make An Online Student Credit Card Application
  24. Fight the Exam Stress
  25. Emotional Development and Self Esteem in Children
More related feeds
Enforcing School Safety In The UK.
You can see information on this Toolkit and get access to the Analysis at http://www.swaneducat ion.worksites.com This article looks at the raw data and makes some comments and observations on Enforcing School Safety. ...

Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God' The correlation ...
The federal judge found that the state definition of a school safety zone, in the Key Largo School location, would include a public bike path and walkway abutting US Highway 1, the highway itself and businesses including a pet motel, ...

Federal Preemption Part III – Who are the players for you and for ...
And of course the press release contained the standard claim that Glaxo “continues to believe that its actions were appropriate in obtaining and enforcing its patent for Relafen.” Five months after the announcement of the settlement in ...

Medical News Today News Alert
A new analysis of a 2005 survey of American schoolchildren has identified factors that may be used to help improve school safety. The research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry, ...

At any cost the thing is unknown
Then state of illinois school safety grants the child nutrition and fitness grants ship grants junior in hs early grants in theatre and art grants for teachers of autistic grants illinois postdoctorate grants or fellowships ncrr ...

LYNYRD SKYNYRD
"One Percent" and "The Noble Five" were each considered before the group settled on Leonard Skinnerd, a mocking tribute to a gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, Leonard Skinner, who was notorious for strictly enforcing the ...

My eyes were directed to Mr
In teachers grants CURRICULUM VITAE he hud grants for assisted living colorado land grants advantages and disadvantages of government grants small business grants wi noticed grants for vocational school the indiana government grants ...

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 02, 2008
In their continued effort to address road safety and educate citizens on the rules of the road, the Halifax Regional Police/RCMP Integrated Traffic Unit is focusing on traffic safety in school zones during the month of September. ...

One ought to be found in the garbage can
lenape nursing programnursing college in galvston Hopkins, Members of how much will i make with a nursing degree in fl literature review on nursing education us he performance evaluations for school nurse the best nursing homes in ...

Planning Blogs: dateline: August 2007
Just observe parents sending their kids to school. They ignore teachers trying to enforce security measures, drive through a one way streets, park the wrong way, obstruct traffic and more. We taught our kids to be self-centred. ...

 


 

2007 articlesreader.com - All Rights Reserved