Risk Management in Physical Education and School Sport

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• Risk Management in Physical Education and School
  Sport

Norfolk PE Teaching Competence Standards 2009
Presentation
Martin Radmore
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Today Learning Outcomes

• Basic legal framework in which we operate
• What risk management means and why it is
  important
• Risk-benefit assessment balancing taking risks
  without undue danger of serious harm
• Managing not minimising risk (risk aversion)
• Importance of regularly reviewing policies,
  procedures, routines and standards in HS
• The risk assessment process
• Standard of risk (safety) awareness expected
• Relationship between good practice and safe
  practice
• Be confident in their practice - eliminate the
  mystique and fear about HS

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Safety in PE and School Sport

• It is important to recognise that despite the
  close management, organisation and supervision of
  pupils, schools like other social environments
  are susceptible to accident or risk.
• Accidents will always happen - its the nature
  of life.
• your roles and responsibilities

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Key Messages

• Risk management is about enabling good things to
  happen, not just preventing the bad.
• Dr Lynne Drennan, CEO ALARM (Zurich
  Municipal News Views, Autumn 2008).
• Risk management should be routine, embedded and
  well documented.
• Tom Shewry, Head of Education, Zurich
  Municipal, (News and Views, Autumn 2008).

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Health and Safety Executive
Note RIDDOR

• HSE statistics show that accidents occur in a
  variety of situations, but that the most
  hazardous areas include the playground (45),
  the sportsfield and the gymnasium.
• 25 million reported injuries/year - 1.5 billion
  pupil days/year.
• PESS total school injuries 0.001 v total pupil
  days.
• Games 42 Gymnastics 27
  Swimming 1
• Principle Termly analysis of incident report
  forms informs about safe practice policy and
  procedures pattern and number

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Risk Management why is it important?

• I) Empower pupils to manage their own safety
• 2) Entitlement to be taught in a safe and
  healthy environment
• 3) High quality PESS involves challenge
• 4) School staff have a legal duty to be proactive
  not reactive
• 5) Helps to avoid allegations of negligence
• careless conduct which injures another and which
  
• the law deems liable for compensation
  (Frederick Place Chambers 1995)
• duty of care (responsibility)
• breach of duty (careless)
• damage
  (injury)
• foreseeability (but for)

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Totally Range of
Increasingly high Danger safe
acceptable levels of risk
risk
Minimising risk (apathy, paranoia, incompetence)
Best practice? (challenge v risk)

• Principles
• Risk benefit assessment weighing protection
  from harm against the provision of stimulating
  experiences.
• Events to be as safe as necessary not as safe as
  possible (RoSPA)
• ii. Exposure to well-managed challenge
  (opportunity) and risk (safety)
• a. educates about risk
• b. opens up exciting learning
  opportunities
• c. develops high quality PESS

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What is Risk Management?

• Good practice/safe practice
• Reasonable forethought to a suitable and
  sufficient level
• 3 main purposes
• ensure potential safety problems are understood
• check whether existing precautions are adequate
• implement any FURTHER precautions necessary

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Continued

• 3 levels of risk assessment
• generic - provided, written
• facility/activity/event specific to do,
  written
• on-going - dynamic expertise, unwritten
• It is a legal requirement HaSaW Act 1974 MHS
  Regs 1999 and common law to have a written risk
  assessment

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What must we do to comply with the Law?

• Show we have carried out a risk (safety)
  assessment PLT, Head etc
• Identify the significant risks (red traffic
  light)
• Identify who could be harmed
• Identify what needs to be done to control/
  reduce the risk to make it sufficiently safe and
  record this.

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Traffic Light Coding concept
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The legal responsibilities of school staff

• MAKE ALL ADULTS WORKING WITH PUPILS AWARE OF
  THEIR LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES
• Know and apply employers policy for HS
• (local requirements take precedence over national
  guidance)
• Pass on guilty knowledge
• Do what is within their power to prevent further
  injury
• Participate in inspections (risk assessments) AS
  A TEAM
• And the common law duty of care show reasonable
  forethought (common sense) (SP 2008 ch 2 pp
  13-17)

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Safety Triangle
Pupils Staff PEOPLE
Appropriate Challenge PHYSICAL EDUCATION Acceptabl
e Risk
ORGANISATION Preparation Progression Class
Management
CONTEXT Facilities Equipment Procedures
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Teachers Responsibilities

• The Education Acts give teachers a range of
  powers in order to deliver education.
• Safe practice must be planned within this
  framework of responsibility and duties.
• There are three identified aspects of this
  responsibility
• Legal and statutory,
• Professional
• Moral

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Reporting Accidents and Near Misses

• You must do this
• Ask your Headteacher / Deputy to clearly explain
  the schools system for reporting accidents
• Minor
• Major
• Critical
• Near Misses

R.I.D.D.O.R
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Staff v Pupils
5 Minute Talk Task

• Teacher participating in and playing football
  with the pupils
• or
• Teachers playing a staff v pupils rounders match

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Legal and Statutory Responsibilities

• Education is often considered to be one of the
  most regulated sections of public life.
• Responsibility for making satisfactory
  arrangements for health and safety rests with the
  employer.
• Who is your employer?
• Common law and statute law impose general duties
  on individuals and bodies.

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Reasonable Steps

• Teachers have supervision duties and are required
  to maintain good order and discipline.
• Must ensure that children are not exposed to
  unacceptable risks.
• Levels of supervision will need to consider the
  nature of the activity paying particular
  attention
• in more dangerous activities with greater risk
• using dangerous equipment
• handling recognised dangerous substances

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Goal Posts
5 Minute Talk Task

• Tragically during the past few years, nine
  children including have been killed by falling
  goalposts and numerous seriously injured. What do
  you know understand about basic safety during say
  a football lesson or after school practice?

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Modus Operandi

• All teachers, specialists and generalists, are
  expected to work within a modus operandi which
  identifies all the foreseeable safety problems
  associated with activities undertaken in relation
  to the school curriculum.
• Any breach of these duties which cause injury or
  loss may give rise to a claim for damages
  (compensation), or sometimes even to criminal
  penalties. Although accidents will occur because
  they cannot always be foreseen, teachers have a
  legal duty to work within a system which
  demonstrates a realistic use of methods which
  successfully anticipate and eliminate foreseeable
  risks.
• Support for you from NCC and afPE Safe Practice
  in PESS (2008)

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Risk Assessment

• The Management of Health and Safety at Work 1992
  Regulations add to the 1974 Act.
• This includes guidelines for risk assessment.
• Employers must introduce measures for the
  planning, organising, monitoring and reviewing
  arrangements for the management of health and
  safety.
• Written Risk Assessments must be recorded and
  shared. (Requirement 1999 Regulations)

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Governing Bodies and Risk Assessment

• Governing bodies and headteachers have a
  responsibility to identify the levels of risk
  that exist in curriculum activities and to ensure
  the design and implementation of effective risk
  control methods, appropriate systems and policies
  to manage, control and protect these measures and
  adequate health and safety training.
• Failure to conduct risk assessments can put a
  school in breach of the law. Failing to equip
  pupils with this skill is to miss an opportunity
  to empower them in relation to their own safety
  now and in the future. (Griffin, 1997. P.3.)
• Thus risk assessment is not just associated with
  events, activities and locations, but with
  childrens own personal safety.

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Definitions - accepted

• Hazards are the potential to cause harm,
  including ill health and injury damage to
  property, or the environment.
• Risk is the likelihood that a specified undesired
  event will occur due to the realisation of a
  hazard by or during, work activities.

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Have a go...
5 Minute Talk Task

• An Infant school wants to use one of the
  following in its Sportsday.
• A three-legged parent and child race
• A sack race
• Or
• A Junior School wants to do a wheelbarrow race
• Borrow a High Jump Mat for proper high jump on
  sports day as a real treat!

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Your School

• The school must have
• A written policy
• Procedures to put this into practice
• Staff with clear responsibilities
• Principle of a clear system of advice
• Regular, approved and reviewed practice
• Risk assessment of each teaching area
• People
• Context
• Organisation

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Risk Assessment the process

• Decide what requires a risk assessment
• Identify the hazards
• Decide who is at risk
• Evaluate the risks
• Record the findings
• Devise an action plan to reduce significant
  risks
• Inform those affected
• Review periodically

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Determining the Risk

• Hazard severity
• Negligible
• Slight
• Moderate
• Severe
• Very severe

• Likelihood
• Unlikely
• Possible
• Quite possible
• Likely
• Very likely

Hazard x Likelihood Risk
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Managing Risk in PESS

• Recap - 3 Levels of Risk Assessment
• Generic
• Facility/activity/event specific- written-annual
• Ongoing - not written

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Top Ten Tips reducing Risk in PE

• A safe teacher of PE considers
• 1) a lesson format to include warm up, technical
  development cool down
• 2) check work space equipment before use
• 3) teaching position to maximise observation of
  class
• 4) using regular approved practice
• 5) progression according to ability
• 6) comparable size,experience, confidence
• 7) not taking a full participation role in the
  game
• 8) strict officiating in games
• 9) involving pupils in their own safety- check
  understanding
• 10) think logically through a lesson- what could
  cause harm? have I covered all likelihood?

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Do you manage quality of teaching and learning?

• Directed to open ended tasks
• Single to linking to combined/multiple tasks
• Simple to complex tasks ( more or less
  time/space/options/equipment/constraints)
• Familiar tasks/environments/groupings to
  unfamiliar ones
• Variety in movement to quality/ technical demand
• Working individually, with a partner, into group
  work involving cooperation/ competition/
  leadership
• Different tasks for different pupils
• Different levels of information/support/
  intervention for pupils working on the same task
• Additional teacher time for some pupils

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Guilty Knowledge

• If you know something to be wrong
• You have a legal obligation to report it
• Write it down to evidence that you have passed it
  on
• It now becomes a managers responsibility

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Support Staff Workforce Reform

• Specified work (i.e. teaching) may not be
  carried out by a person in a school unless s/he
  holds QTS or satisfy the specific requirements
  (Education Act 2003, s133).
• HLTAs, sports coaches and other suitable
  adults may teach classes or groups in timetabled
  physical education.
• Provided they
• only assist or support the work of a nominated
  teacher in school
• are subject to the direction and supervision of
  a nominated teacher
• have satisfied the head teacher, through a risk
  assessment, that they have the skills,
  experience and expertise required to carry
  out the specified work.
• 
  (SP 2008 chapter 4 and Appendix 3)

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Competence?(direct or distant supervision)

• Expertise in a/the range of activities to be
  taught ie
• - technical knowledge
• - knowledge of progression
• - safety issues
• - rules
• Observation analysis skills to ensure that what
  is going on is safe (HaSaWA 1974)
• Good class control!
• Suitability to work with children

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Negligence

• Principles - duty (responsibility)
• - breach
  (careless)
• - damage (injury)
• Standard - reasonably competent person
• Qualifications, training, experience and skills

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Managing Negligence

• Unofficial defences / Good Practice
• common and approved practice
• progression
• comparable sizes, abilities, preparation,
  experience and confidence
• strict officiating
• no improvisation
• principles of safe exercise and preparation
• teacher / coach role - not involved in the game
• records - attendance and content
• documented procedures which are followed
• risk assessment records

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Why do accidents incidents occur

• Lack of management control
• -inadequate programme or policy
• -inadequate standards
• - failure to comply with standards
• Basic causes i.e. origins
• -lack of knowledge/skill
• -lack of supervision
• -inadequate maintenance
• -normal wear tear

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continued

• Immediate causes i.e. symptoms
• -not using equipment properly
• -not checking equipment
• -improper lifting
• -horseplay

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How do we do it?

• Team activity
• in-situ in the facilities
• think of the people/context/organisation triangle
• based on existing documentation, procedures
  practice
• look for further precautions necessary
• reasonable anticipation/observation as subject
  teachers/specialists
• NOT about writing absolutely everything down again

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Risk Management a Portfolio

• Scheme of work
• Lesson plans
• Attendance registers
• Assessment records
• Handbook- policies,procedures,routines
• Medical records

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.continued

• IEPs / SEN registers
• Out of hours club registers
• Annual inspection reports (Health and Safety)
• Accident report forms - analysis
• Minutes of team / staff meetings
• Risk assessment records

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Supervision Direction

• Management
• - initial assessment
• - induction
• - information about procedures,routines
  standards
• - regular communications
• - risk assessments
• - shared monitoring/planning
• - monitoring competence
• - CPD

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Risk Management conclusions

• Your targets
• To feel comfortable confident about the
  requirements of risk management
• To understand your roles responsibilities in
  teaching PESS
• You should contribute only to the process NOT DO
  it. PE subject leaders responsibility with Head.
  Course for them in June / July