Legal risk and more paperwork: do health and safety laws threaten the great Kiwi school trip?
Legal risk and more paperwork: do health and safety laws threaten the great Kiwi school trip?
New research shows high levels of teacher anxiety and frustration over legal liability and paperwork for school trips. But there are ways to maintain this crucial part of the curriculum.
I'd hate to see the school trips decline.
As is tradition with articles that pose questions like these, the answer is always no.
The law creates expectations that all practicable steps...
It actually reads:
(1) that it is reasonably practicable to take in the circumstances...
(b)/(c) and (d) the current state of knowledge about... (e) the availability and cost of each of those means.
I think that the Bold part is often over looked. Do a risk assessment (and document it), put into place reasonably practicable steps (seek advice where needed) and get out there and enjoy our out doors.
Whilst this is true, the reality is that this is a race to the top. If one school finds that it is reasonably practicable to do an action, then this is the new industry standard.
If you have worked in the industrial world, this happens, the law says X but industry best practice goes beyond the law; which it often does (the law is slow) then if there is an incident and you "only" follow the law this is not looked at kindly.
This unfortunately, means the schools with the most resources get to set the standards.
I'd be sad to see them decline too, but on the other hand I also really hated it when a kid got killed by one last year when the school decided to visit a flood prone cave during a heavy rain warning.
There has to be a happy medium around high risk vs low risk trips.
There has got to be a mechanism to prevent individual schools from making terrible judgment calls.
Agreed, but it is a fine line to walk.
Unfortunately there will be mistakes no matter how much paperwork is and to the process.
Maybe there's opportunity for a pre-approved list? Visiting a cave sounds like a high risk activity that feels low risk, so it might be hard for a school to make a good call on. But if there was a list of activities to guide schools, maybe that could help?
It transfers some of the responsibility to the government (who organises the list), and could give schools a concrete list of things they should be doing or considering for different activity types.