‘I believe that there are too many health and safety regulations in the school system; that children are too insulated from risks; and that over-regulation reduces personal responsibility in a negative way. This is damaging to children’s education and is directly responsible for the diminution in personal responsibility, as rules and regulations crowd out the space for professional judgment and common sense’. Your thoughts/comments please.

Doug I would disagree - I see the fault being with the 'interpretation' of variuos pieces of regulation and implementing what needs to be done to comply while still showing a common sense approach. In saying that I can see why some headteachers may chose to stop certain activities rather than take a chance that they are still complying with regs if they choose to continue the activity. I work in a college and believe me it is not as big a gap from school as you may think, attitudes amonst some are very similar. Often I am asked 'Can we still do ....... or should we not due to H&S?' My attitude is that as long as we can identify any significant risk from said activity and put appropriate control measures in place, then there is no need to curtail activities. Some departments do work with a greater degree of risk depending on the subject but if some degree of risk is inherent with that particular course i.e game keeping, construction skills etc then we need to build that into the course with the appropriate control measures so not to take away the total learning experience. Years ago I used to do some work for a nursery and perhaps this example may demonstrate how trying to eliminate all risk can have a negative effect. The nursery had two areas for climbing frames and swings, the newer area was fitted with very expensive rubber matting and the older area with tree bark. They actually ended up with more knocks, bruises etc from the area with the matting rather than the tree bark as there was a perception if the children fell on mattingn they would be okay and hence tended to take more risks. I would not want to see every activity in a school wrapped in cotton wool just proportionite risk control Hope this helps

To state Health and Safety Regulations is damaging to childrens education indicates a lack of understanding in the requirements and appplication of what a particular piece of regulation is outlining what needs to be done. Children are more vulnerable and therefore owed a greater Duty of Care because of their lack of experience and being able to take ownership of their personal responsibility. Children have to learn about judgement and common sense which should be part of their education and actually learn more about being risk aware and not risk averse as this has social and economic benefits. There have been too many examples of those that work in education who have not been sufficiently trained or applied professional judgement and common sense related to Health and Safety Regulations and as such the consequences have been serious injury and the death of pupils. The fault was nothing to do with Health and Safety Regulations but more to do with had a competent person ensured sufficient planning and controls measures were in place serious injury and death could have been prevented.

We have a teacher who came from another local authority. He wanted to organise and run a school trip so came to me (H&S Manager) as part of the planning process. In conjunction with the teacher I advised on and produced the risk assessment (Level One Trip). The process took about 20 minutes. As the teacher left my office he stated that he had tried to organise a similar trip at his last school. All the paperwork was submitted to the LA H&S department who took 6 months to return the signed off permission - by this time the academic year had ended and the trip date had been and gone. Obvious that the health and safety bod at the LA had even read the date of the trip. HE GAVE UP!!! Just an example of the beuracracy, red tape and downright stupidity of the system. Thank goodness new guidelines have recently been issued concerning school trips. Rich

Yes fine but this has nothing to with Health and Safety Regulations but more to do with the LA systems and procedures however it seems that it was assumed the paperwork that was submitted to the LA would be returned in a timely manner however it also seems the teacher sat around for six months and did not chase things up. Had he done so the trip may have gone ahead as planned. He was the organiser and as I see it was partly to blame for the trip not going ahead.

Irwin So if you want an example of educational legislation which was very prescriptive try looking at the Boarding School minimum standards. The Government has just gloated (September 2011) that they have reduced the 52 standards down to about 20. I did a quick cross reference of both documents. Yes indeed the standards have been reduced to 20 but it's a sleight of hand magic trick. All the prescriptiveness was deleted and many standards incorporated into one. Every single standard still appears in the new version but without the prescriptiveness. No change then!!! Rich

I think we are at cross purposes.

Dougc - Though I hadn't seen them before, the wording in your opening post looked like a quotation. Also, the speech marks (though single rather than double ones) were a bit of clue about their nature, so I decline any credit about this aspect. I strongly think, as Michael Gove suggests, that there is an ongoing diminution in encouraging/cultivating personal responsibility and common sense among young people in the UK. However, in schools, as mentioned in my response at #2, I don't think health & safety legislation (laws) are to blame. Also, a significant part of this downward trend is surely attributable to parents who don't understand and certainly don't demonstrate to and encourage personal responsibility and common sense in their children. Perhaps Michael Gove needs to get out more, or at least talk more to headteachers and other relevant people about this matter. Also, he might do well to chat with MPs who are members of the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee who investigated and published a report “Practical experiments in school science lessons and science field trips” in September this year. I mentioned this report in a response last Friday to the whimsical Fridayish topic asking what forum users would like from Santa this Christmas, and have pasted much of that response below: The report, available at http://www.publications..../cmsctech/1060/1060i.pdf includes the fact that the Committee are concerned that UK school pupils are not receiving the practical science education necessary to produce the next generation of scientists. It also thinks that “health and safety” is misused as a convenient excuse for avoiding practicals and work outside the classroom, and that other more fundamental reasons explain why many school pupils/students receive poor practical science education. In my opinion the report makes good reading and comprises a welcome ray of hope and sanity if its contents are suitably publicised and heeded. However, one aspect of the report which puzzles me is that a visit by a school group to a science type museum is apparently classed as a "field trip". Perhaps things have changed over the years, but my experience of geology and geomorphology while at school and then college in the 1970s was that field trips meant practical observation, measurement and/or sampling activities out of doors, and sometimes in remote locations!

No one wants to expose children to injury but there has to be some common sense applied to H&S policy at schools just as in all other areas. There has to be a balance between safety and life lessons. We can wrap them all in foam rubber and put them under 24-hour guard and they'll remain safe, but they won't turn out to be very productive members of society. This is usually where I go into my, "when I was a child..." rant, but I'll spare everyone the long-winded blather. But I will say that for a physical ed. course in 6th grade, I had "marksmanship" where we went to a shooting range and learned to fire .22 caliber rifles at a target. School shootings were non-existent. If two boys got into a fight, they were brought to the gymnasium, given boxing gloves and allowed to settle the matter. No one was ever seriously hurt, the boys usually ended up friends and there were no lawsuits. I could give many more examples but I already promised not to. Children need to be protected up to a point, but then you need to let them learn to grow up as well. And this heresy comes from a 20-year H&S veteran.

Mike Interesting comments and I am not trying to ban boxing or any other contact sport, but I believe statistically more boxers have died since the introduction of boxing glove that bare knuckle days. This may be an urban myth but I am told it is because you can hit the other persons head harder without breaking your own hand.

Brian, you are quite correct but you are also citing statistics based on professional boxers, not 12-year old boys with gloves as big as their heads. My point was not to debate the relative safety of boxing vs. bare knuckles brawling but just that we can't put childern in a cocoon in the name of safety. The problem is one where anything put forth in the name of safety for children, regardless of how overbearing it might be, is rarely argued with for fear of being branded as uncaring. The Rules Trolls are then allowed to run amok.