Understanding Health and Safety within Schools

As a leading accredited health and safety training provider to the Education sector we work with thousands of schools to help ensure school staff and teaching staff are currently trained to help ensure compliance.

In this article we answer the Top 5 questions asked by our wonderful new school clients to help you understand the basics f health and safety requirements with a school setting.

Before we start it is first important to note that in the UK schools also have a duty to comply with the legal requirements as outlined in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and its associated regulations.

Therefore education employers have duties to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of teachers, education staff and pupils are catered for both in school and during off-site visits, including, visitors, volunteers and contractors.

Who is responsible for health and safety in your school?

The overall accountability for health and safety generally lies with the employer of the members of staff within that school.

However the day-to-day running of the school including responsibility for the health and safety of staff and pupils is normally delegated to the head teacher and school management team.

What is health and safety in schools and do we need to allow for it?

Health and safety in a school environment is about taking a sensible and proportionate approach to ensure the premises provide a healthy and safe place for all who use them.

This includes the school workforce such as teachers, admins and support staff, supervisors, and maintenance staff as well as all visitors and pupils.

How is health and safety monitored in school?

All schools should have a dynamic ‘School's Health & Safety Policy’ this should be reviewed annually and updated on a regular basis. To monitor the effectiveness of the health and safety policy Internal Self-Inspections (Safety Audits) of the School should take place at least once annually. These inspections are carried out by a small team of appropriate staff members.

What is the main area of focus regarding general health and safety training at the moment?

One of the main issues for 2021 within a school environment is the potential for illness via ‘Disease Transmission’..

Teachers spend their days mixing with students, colleagues and parents, making them susceptible to bacterial and viral infections.

By instilling best practices for hand hygiene and infection control this risk can be reduced.

Other key areas of health and safety focus we often see are:

Who is responsible for any enforcement to schools?

The HSE and local authorities are responsible for enforcing health and safety legislation. Together they ensure that duty holders manage the health and safety of their workforce and those affected by their work.

The HSE is primarily responsible for enforcing health and safety law in schools and they operate from a network of regional offices.

Inspectors visit workplaces to check that people are sticking to the rules and they may take various types of enforcement action to deal with any breach of the law: issuing informal advice; improvement or prohibition notices, or prosecution when something is seriously wrong.

How can I easily deploy, track and monitor health and safety training for my school staff?

We have developed a fully hosted and easy-to-use learning management system named ‘ClickHSE’ to help all schools comply by providing a low cost solution for managing health and safety training, as well as associated risk assessments that can be audited and tracked within the admin dashboard.

Key documents such as your health and safety policies can also be deployed and tracked showing full compliancy for auditing purposes.

If you wuold like a free 15 minute demo of ClickHSE to see why thousands of headteachers, trust managers and school business mangers love it just lick the button below or call us on 01905 371321.

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Understanding Health and Safety within Schools