Posted By Taff2
Tragic accident - summarised fall from height for a 3 year old in school yard during breaktime - this lead to him sustaining injuries that required hospitalisation - in hospital it appears he developed an MRSA infection - which seems to have caused the death. Headmaster found guilty - not sure whether hospital are being charged?!?!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/...s/north_west/6922637.stm

Thought on this case?

Posted By Stuart C
It is unfortunate that the media coverage of this case has focussed on the implications for teachers (which is limited) rather than the impliction for child safety. Look at the statistic of childhood fatals and see where falls down stairs contribute.

I am sure its a controversial case but can not in my opinion be placed in the silly health and safety category. In my opinion education at 3yr old is as much about care as it is teaching.

a large flight of steps out of sight of the one teacher on duty
a supervision ratio of 1 to 59 pupils ranging in age from 3 to 15 ( accepted school ratios in state schools as i understand it is 2:26)

Yes Kian's death was attributed to MRSA, however he had been in a coma for two weeks and as is not unusual he developed pneumonia and in this immuno compromised state contracted MRSA.

Posted By Jack
As far as I can glean from the press reports he was prosecuted as employer (presumably under section 3). Can anyone confirm that? If it is the case the implications for headteachers elsewhere are indeed limited (if it had been a state school it would have been the local authority - or governing body in the case of foundation and voluntary aided schools - that would have been prosecuted. Now a section 7 case might have been more interesting!

Posted By Phil H

Taff

I have often wondered about the committment some schools have towards health and safety for pupils.(I do not mean in this particular case but in general)

From poor manual handling (no lockers for children's books,poor seating to asbestos in schools and poor risk assessments for activity based sessions)

Teachers, and staff have union protection but who has the interests of the pupils at heart.

Posted By AHS
I am afraid our State schooling is failing children in many different areas mainly connected with supervision.

I cannot comment on this precise case but the government needs to concentrate more on education in general.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Thank you for drawing attention to this report, Taff2. A good case study example of the value of professional risk assessment especially where the safety of minors is involved.

These quotes from the BBC report highlight common H & S policy issues:

"Defence barrister Patrick Harrington had previously told the court it was a "one-in-a-million" accident, and had highlighted the school's exceptionally good accident record.

James Porter, who also owns the school, had told the court that Kian had known he was in an out-of-bounds area.

He said the playground supervision level was enough because of the ethos of the school and the pupils' self-disciplined behaviour.

Speaking on the steps of the court, Kian's grandfather Ken Williams expressed his relief at the verdict, saying: "Kian was not old enough to make decisions for himself. He was just a baby."

On the face of it, the Defence barrister was probably right, that the accident was 'one in a million.

What the losing defendant appears to have completely lost sight of was the gravity of this 'one in a million' incident.

Sadly, his public stand might resonate better if there was a retrospective acknowledgement of misjudgment and flawed process of recognising the scale of risk factors and of assessing them appropriately.

Posted By Adrian Watson
Kieran,

Whilst events involving children are always emotional I think it worthwhile to remind ourselves that it is very easy to foresee the risk of serious injury after it happened.

Unfortunately, this person did not have the benefit of hindsight. Consequently, I think that another person with the same facts apriori would probably have reached the same conclusion about the level of risk despite the outcome.

Regards Adrian

Posted By Stuart C
Adrian

I am sorry I can not agree with the 1 in a million quote nor that this risk was only "foreseeable in hindsight"

Every year there are over 300,000 A&E attendances following falls on stairs - this was a 3 year old, the steps were brick and designated "out of bounds". Why out of bounds i wonder.

Take the picture as a whole, the age of the child, the poor level of supervision given the layout of the playground and the wide age ranges of the pupils and the situation in my view looks different

Clearly the jury were of this view too, 11 to 1.

Posted By Granville Jenkins
Had a risk assessment had been carried out then the severity of the hazard would have been High, a baby or small child falling from such hieght would be bound to recieve serious injuries, then you can consider the age of the baby at 3 years old, not a child and the likelihood that they would do something daft/silly is again High. Any baby could have accidentally fallen or tripped while on those steps, whatever the likelihood of an accident remains High.

Therefore based on a 3 x 3 matrix for scoring the risk level with 1 low, 3 high, given the facts as both the likelihood and severity are high this would give a score of 9 (which in my risk assessments means a high probability of death - either through the fall or as a direct result of the injuries that have been sustained.

Had this simple risk assessment process been carried out then it would have been easily identifiable that the steps should have been segregated by a fence/gate to stop babies/small children gaining access in the first place, which would have eliminated the hazard of falling from height.

How on earth someone can expect a 3 year old baby to be in control of its faculties is beyond me and deserves to be treated with the contempt that it deserves - would any mother leave their 3 year old to play on a set of unguarded steps!

Regards
Granville

Posted By Peter Leese
MODERATORS

My first response in this thread was to a contribution by Raymond Rapp - the second message. As this as been removed it makes a nonsense of my reply - please remove it.

Posted By Jack
Crim, the views you are putting forward are the sort of thing that makes staff in schools adopt bonkers conkers solutions. Most accidents in schools are either in the playground (particularly primary schools) or in organised sporting activities (particularly in secondary schools). Playground accidents mainly result from typical 'children at play' activities. My own children had as many at home as at school! Accidents in sporting activities usually occur in well organised sessions following the rules of the sport in question. So I think your suggestion that headteachers take note is misplaced unless of course you think they should be kept in a cotton wool.

Posted By Seamus O Sullivan
I am no expert but I
think the risk might not be low if the children played ball on the top level, chances are the ball would bounce to lower level sometime and the children would run after the ball, all the way down the steps.

I recently came across a container of petrol ( required for a lawnmower ) in a school class room.( in a small press) IT IS NO LONGER THERE !! It was an oversight by the teachers and was stored with a while. The lawnmower was stored in a storeroom with lots of rags etc, children had access to this as well. Now they are both stored in a small locked metal shed, children no longer have access.

Teachers are caring people but sometimes have difficulty getting funds for small things. He had to buy his own ear muffs!!

Seamus

Posted By peter gotch
and looking at one report this was a flight of 13 steps which the one person supervising could not see.

P

Posted By Graham Bullough
Someone earlier referred to the headteacher not following LEA (local education authority) guidelines. Perhaps they mean guidelines from the Govt DfES (Dept for Education & Skills). From previously reading about this case, I recall that the school is a private one rather than a LEA one, and has been owned by the headteacher (and his wife?) for some 30 years.

I don't know about the accuracy of the defence lawyer's "million to one" likelihood of the fatality occurring as it did (i.e. young child [not a "baby" - surely babies are under say one year of age] jumping down the steps - falling and incurring significant injuries and then later in hospital contracting MRSA which led to the child's death, but surely the overall outcome, a tragic one, was still relatively remote - as suggested by a recently retired HSE principal inspector who gave evidence for the defence.

As to supervision of pupils in schools generally, and not this particular case, it seems from my long experience of work with LEA schools that some parents have unrealistic expectations about supervision. They imagine that someone is supervising, i.e. physically observing, their kids at all times while they are at school. Do such parents maintain the same degree of supervision themselves when their kids are at home?! In reality such supervision is impossible to maintain. Even if a school was able to have many adults available to provide continuous supervision, they would still not be able to prevent each and every mishap. Fortunately the vast majority of pupil accidents - which usually occur in primary school playgrounds during breaks - are minor and result in litle more than an inconsequential bump or graze.

The degree of supervision for mainstream pupils tends to be age related. Thus, the nursery/reception units at the LEA schools I work with have relatively higher adult/pupil supervision ratios compared with those for older pupils. In addition, they usually have their own playground areas which tend to be both flat and segregated from the main school playgrounds. This facilitates reasonable supervision of their very young pupils and also protects them from the activities of older larger children.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Interesting observation by Rob.

While the proximate cause of the little boy's
death was indeed MRSA in hospital, it is hardly the root cause which resulted in his detention in hospital.

For reviewing incidents, the HSE Guide, 'Reducing error and influencing behaviour' does clearly specify analysis of root causes and attention to 'human factors', i.e. how thoughts and feelings of all the stakeholders in a health and safety system (this time a school, with a very diffuse and wide net of stakeholders) makeup a causal network.

Curiously, the pre-occupation with the supervision ratio (a risk management measure) appears to have clouded attention to the apparent failure of the school to adequately assess risks of slips, trips and falls.

And to take engineering measures to avoid them to a fair degree, and not simply to prevent or reduce the risk through behavioural measures.

Posted By CFT
I'm certain I am not without sin at some point in my H&S life so I won't and can't cast a stone; there by the grace of god go I, clearly I have been exceptionally fortunate to have ticked every single box in my careful H&S protective life. I feel deeply for the family of the child and my heart goes out to them, sadly the teacher must live with this mistake for the rest of their life, a punishment more horrendous I could not imagine.

I have heard today that the scenario if the RA had been on the ball then MRSA would not have come into play because the fall would never have taken place; if the child had not gone to school, if it had been raining, if if if???

It has reminded me to not ever be complacent, I shall ensure I learn from this terrible tragedy.

C