Striking the right balance on excursions

While it is true that schools have both a legal and ethical duty to ensure the safety of pupils and staff, when it comes to shaping the behaviours and attitudes of the citizens of tomorrow, attention needs to be paid to encouraging children to become risk-aware and not risk-averse. Risk taking is a key part of a child’s development - let us not forget this.
    
As employers, schools should treat risk assessment and risk management as key tools to enable activities to take place safely. Carrying out an appropriate risk assessment is a legal duty in accordance with the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (which sit under the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974) and relates to buildings and activities, including school visits.
    
Managing health and safety in a proportionate and planned way should be a top priority for schools, especially as responsibilities for safety and health management in schools and colleges are being refocused. By taking reasonable steps to adhere to the law, a school will be able to defend itself against a claim for damages should an accident occur.
    
One of the most valuable things a school can do when planning school visits is to involve children in the risk assessment process. Enlisting the help of pupils to identify hazards which staff might not have picked up on is a useful and fruitful exercise, not least because Ofsted inspectors will now examine a “pupil’s ability to assess and manage risk appropriately and keep themselves safe”, under the revised Ofsted Inspection Framework.
    
This is where schools have to strike the right balance between keeping risks under control “so far as is reasonably practicable” and judging the risk of doing something against the cost of not doing it, while taking into account the health and safety of employees and anyone else affected by a school’s actions.  

Planning a school visit
As the UK’s oldest safety charity, with a mission to “save lives and reduce injuries”, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) advocates that schools take an approach which ensures that children and staff are “as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible”.
    
RoSPA believes that children and young people benefit from being challenged to visit new places and take part in fresh activities. In general, school visits are low risk activities - but this is because a lot of thought and planning has gone into assessing and managing any risks, as well as recognising the potential benefits.
    
While a very large number of children and young people take part in school trips each year, these are usually without mishap. It is very rare for a tragedy to occur. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has brought only two prosecutions involving school visits in the five-year period between 2005/6 and 2009/10. Prosecutions invariably result from incidents where there has been recklessness or a clear failure to consider and adopt sensible measures. But just because an accident has happened, this does not necessarily mean that there has been a breach of health and safety law.

Risk of injury
Injuries from leisure activities show that children are far more likely to get hurt playing football or rugby at school than going on a school hiking trip, for instance.
    
Safety arrangements for school visits should be part of an overarching health and safety management system and policy. The policy should include a clear statement about the benefits of school visits or other opportunities for learning outside the classroom - making it clear that pupils’ safety is paramount at all times.
    
Preparation and planning are the key elements to a successful and safe school visit. Teachers and other leaders should be trained or otherwise adequately prepared to deal with, or avoid, any significant hazards they may encounter on each specific visit.

Conclusion
A sense of adventure is a big part of school visits which should not be stifled by health and safety. By managing the physical and psychological risks well, children and young people will still be able to develop their self confidence and a sense of achievement.
    
RoSPA has launched a new programme that checks and validates the systems schools and academies have in place as part of health and safety risk management. RoSPA SchoolSafe assesses a school’s ability to “teach safely” and its arrangements to “teach safety”, and each review results in a report and action plan for the school. In December 2013, Withernsea Primary School in East Riding of Yorkshire became the first school in the country to be awarded an A grade in the programme.

Further information
www.rospa.com