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Enforcing School Safety In The UK.
"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.swaneducat
ion.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.
About the author:
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 http://swaneducation.workzsites.com
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