Join us for Episode 7 of The Safer Schools Podcast where we continue our discussion on how you can approach the task of managing risk assessments within your school – talking through some of the key challenges faced and how you can overcome them, including:
- The need to include children and young persons as hazards where relevant (it may sound a little OTT, but just hear us out!)
- How you can actively include staff in the risk assessment process
- How you can ensure that your risk assessments are being communicated and disseminated, and the importance of evidencing this
- The use of generic and model risk assessments, including CLEAPSS model risk assessments for Science and Design Technology
- When and why risk assessments should be reviewed
- How you can monitor the effectiveness of your risk assessment policy.
We also discuss various guidance documents and templates to assist you with the above.
This episode is Part 2 of 2, and so if you haven’t yet had the opportunity to listen to Episode 6 then we’d recommend that you listen to them in chronological order to gain the full benefit – and it’ll just make more sense!
What do we know about children and young persons when it comes to Health and Safety? Well, we know that they lack risk perception. We know that they lack emotional and physical maturity. We know that they’re much less likely to follow instructions, and we also know that they’re much more likely to mess about or engage in horseplay… and all of that is entirely forseeable… so your risk assessment needs to provide details of any existing risk control measures together with details of any further control measures that are required in order to reduce the risks to your children and young persons so far as is reasonably practicable.
So, if you’re a Bursar, Estates Manager, Health & Safety Manager, School Business Manager, Head of Department, or indeed ANYONE responsible for overseeing H&S or risk assessments in a school, then this is the episode for you!
Let’s start a conversation on how we can make our schools safer!
To listen to Episode 7 just click on the button below, and don’t forget to subscribe in your podcast app (available in Podbean, Spotify, and Amazon Music).
Questions, comments, suggestions for topics? This is your Podcast too…
Drop an email to: info@pearsonwebb.co.uk
We’ve provided links below to the various guidance documents and other resources referred to in this episode:
- Health & Safety Executive (HSE) guidance on young people at work: https://https://www.hse.gov.uk/young-workers/employer/law.htm#:~:text=The%20law%20applying%20to%20the%20age%20of%20a%20young%20person%20or%20child&text=Children%20under%2013%20are%20generally,and%20the%20MSLA%20can%20do.
- Health & Safety Executive (HSE) example risk assessments: https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/risk-assessment-template-and-examples.htm
- Health and Safety Executive (HSE) example risk assessment for Education: https://www.hse.gov.uk/education/example-risk-assessments.htm
- CLEAPSS guidance document L196 – Managing Risk Assessment in Science: https://science.cleapss.org.uk/Resource/L196-Managing-Risk-Assessment-in-Science.pdf
- CLEAPSS guidance document G235 – Management of Risk Assessment in D & T: https://dt.cleapss.org.uk/Resource-File/G235-Management-of-Risk-Assessment-in-D-T.pdf
