Schools are not my area, but I have been asked to look at and comment on a school's H&S policy and arrangements. I'm not looking for a discussion about professional liability for advice given on a personal basis - please just assume I've got that covered.

I don't really understand how RIDDOR works with respect to pupils. I've looked at HSE edis1 (http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/edis1.pdf) but I'd like more guidance on how you judge whether an injury is "from or in connection with a work activity". The guidance basically says that playground falls won't be reportable, unless they are (which is not terribly helpful). An example of when they would be reportable is "incidents arising because ... the school had not provided adequate supervision, eg where particular risks were identified but no action was taken to provide suitable supervision". But a high proportion of playground incidents could be attributed to inadequate supervision (if you were minded to). Further, if someone (say) falls off some feature or play equipment once, then someone else doing so probably becomes reasonably foreseeable, and the risk should then be identified.

Can anyone point me towards more or better guidance on interpretation of this area?

The other aspect I'm not sure about is the trigger to report incidents "by the quickest practicable means". Someone not at work going to hospital would normally require this, but the edis1 document does not address this, and further says the list of major injuries does not apply to pupils and visitors. The particular reason I ask is that the school procedure (which is apparently lifted from the local authority specimen procedure) only requires a report on an accident within 24 hours, and then someone decides whether it require RIDDOR reporting - and a delay to the next day does not seem compatible with 'quickest practicable means'. I'm confident it's not for eg a teacher - if a teacher suffered a RIDDOR major, then the current procedure is not good enough - but is that how it works for pupil injuries?

Thanks for any pointers to better guidance.

P.S. meant to say that I've not found anything better on guidance....you just have to ignore the odd 'do we, don't we' conflicting statements!

Bob,

would the pupil be treated as a member of the public and therefore would be reportable for just attending the hospital, the 24 hr rule applies to employee's.

being hurt in Sporting activities would not count as RIDDOR hospital or not unless it was a failure of the equipment.