Can anyone point me to the definition of "close supervision" in a pre-school nursery context? I've trawled the Care Commission website and Googled exhaustively without success. Much obliged.

Also the NSPCC may be able to help Its interesting to note that many children situations are not covered by any particular law 1 funny aspect is that until 18:00 hours a professional child minder is subject to all kinds of controls but after 18:00 hours all the controls vanish [I may be out of date so please correct me?] but I am lead to believe that was the case ~5 years ago when a friend looked into becoming an official child minder. She pulled out because she could not get her head around such gaping holes in an otherwise good system Additionally she was expected to be a first aider where the first aid regs do not apply to the children and as she was working on her own she may not have been able to give first aid to herself if she really needed it in any case!

When I was in the coal mining industry we regarded 'close personal supervision' to mean that the superviser could touch the person they were supervising e.g. within arms length. In relation to the educational environment there is guidance somewhere which specifies teacher/pupil ratios. I only know the ones that I have already come across and am not sure where it is written down. In schools where the pupils have additional needs some of the subject areas (e.g. craft, design and technology) the maximum number of pupils the teacher can supervise is 6, whereas in mainstream schools it is 20. In relation to excursions and trips there is a Scottish Executive publication which recommends a maximum of 15 pupils to one teacher/adult supervisor, with an expectation that the risk assessment will further define this.

Thanks for the coal industry parallel Bob. We can of course define 'close supervision' from obvious dictionary definition and a fair amount of case law (and the recent tragedy at Whitby may also qualify in the coming months). Just to be clear though, I'm looking for definition of "close supervision" from the perspective & context of the governing body, if indeed the term has been defined by them.