Saturday, January 1, 2011

Accident Reporting in School in the UK - what are the rules


Accident Reporting in School in the UK - what are the rules?
I am pretty sure I know the answer but need to double check before giving my son's school an ear bashing about it. My 10 year old attends special sessions at school to help with his co-ordination, some sort of exercise classes to help with the problem. On the way home today I noticed something red round his neckline so checked closer and he has a friction burn about 3 inches long around his neck, I asked how it had happened and he says he had an accident with a skipping rope in his session and it strangled him, I asked if there was an accident report in his bag for me about it and he says nothing was filled in, but the teacher was aware of what happened and the mark came up later. Later in class that day, his main class teacher asked how he got the mark and he told her, yet she also didn't follow it up or record/report it in any way. Obviously I'm quite annoyed that the school seem to have totally ignored what could have been 100 x times more serious, no contact with me, no record of the incident ... I am pretty sure that laws in the school must be similar to that of the workplace and that this should have at the minimum been recorded in an accident book, am I right?
Primary & Secondary Education - 1 Answers
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The school is certainly legally obliged to record accidents/incidents. Whether there is a similar onus to inform parents is nebulous but it ought at least to be considered sensible to do so. How a child 'accidentally' gets a friction burn, such as you describe, from a skipping rope is definitely cause for concern and I would certainly give the school a rocket and demand the details. It's easy enough for schools to pay lip service to policies and pursue parents where abuse is suspected and a member of staff who sees the mark and doesn't know what happened might rightly raise concerns. If you don't like the answers given, follow the complaints procedure to its highlest level and involve your local, elected representatives. As an extreme measure, I got police involved when a school failed to deal with a violent bullying issue and the remedial effect was instant. Good luck :o)
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