Earlier this month the Daily Mail slapped a “Conkers Bonkers” headline over an article about a council’s debate on whether it needed a policy on conkers. In my view, the councillors were being sensible. In these litigious times schools, too, should review playground policies and practice.
Health and safety laws do not require schools to ban everything remotely dangerous. They are expected to consider risks that are “reasonably foreseeable”, and take “reasonably practicable” steps to avoid or to minimise them. To be “reasonably foreseeable” something injurious would have to have happened previously, or it should be obvious to any onlooker that an accident was waiting to happen.
Minor grazes and scrapes are likely in playgrounds. But, according to Lord Salmon in a 1969 appeal case, it would be wrong to ban “the ordinary pleasures which school-children so much enjoy”. So, as long as the measures schools choose fall in the range of responses of a reasonable adult with experience of playground safety, they will have acted properly.Schools should look at how playground activities are conducted, review accidents and ask what can be learned from them.
They should also assess what risks activities pose, taking into account the age and aptitude of pupils and how they behave. They should consider if the supervision is adequate. It may then be necessary to change or augment safety arrangements, or instruct the pupils in how to cope with dangers. When this has been done, staff, pupils and parents should be informed of the arrangements.
English courts have always been reasonable about playground accidents. A judge once said: “Life is full of physical dangers which children must learn to recognise and develop the ability to avoid. The playground is one of the places to learn.”
See Health and Safety etc Act 1974; Ward v Hertfordshire C.C. (1969); Mays v Essex C.C. (1975)
