Is morality something you expect of others?

However that’s the way it will be, if it works for a month I will be surprised, either policy will be reversed, or it’s back to online education

Or no education at all as it has been for some children .

Lucca

Sorry david you didn’t answer my question about government guidelines ? dont mean to nag or anything....

I don’t agree with the proposed precautions and don’t believe they will achieve anything other than increase the workload for the staff. With no masks one child is going to expose the whole class because they are all using the same airspace day after day.

However that’s the way it will be, if it works for a month I will be surprised, either policy will be reversed, or it’s back to online education.

Can I ask Grandad1943 what happens in industry when you come across a risk which cannot be satisfactorily reduced to a safe level because of some obstacle such as a lack of money, staff or equipment. Do you just allow the activity to go ahead anyway?

In regard to government guidelines, the education sector does what every other sector and industry has done on restart in this crisis. You simply work your way through those guidelines and re-open.

The Schools will become fully functional again in September, our children expect that to happen, their parents expect that to happen, and the teaching profession must ensure that it does happen.

You then get on with it and work the problems as they come about as all other sectors are doing.

Sorry david you didn’t answer my question about government guidelines ? dont mean to nag or anything....

Yes there will be transmission but that is going to happen anyway, you can’t get hundreds of children into a building and expect there to be isolation, it’s not going to happen. The risk of serious illness is extremely low, we already know virus spreads between groups in close contact, it won’t be casual social distancing as in the street or the shops, it will be all day every day
As usual in winter anyone elderly and vulnerable should stay well away from children, more so this year.

If it can be managed socially distanced classes presumably would mean smaller class sizes. Great !
I always thought half the issues in education could have been solved with much smaller class sizes

DavidHS. So let’s be realistic unless there is a serious outbreak at a school education should be done as normal.“

You may think that, so are you saying schools should ignore government guidelines ??

Davidhs

Risk is something we face everywhere every day, we have to live with it.
Regarding schools, the biggest risk to a child (teachers too) is traveling to school, far more get injured on the journey to school, sending children to school we accept that risk. There are over 1000 children injured going to school every month so risk of a child catching Covid 19 and becoming seriously ill is much lower than that.

So let’s be realistic unless there is a serious outbreak at a school education should be done as normal.

I'm not sure how you work that out Davidhs.

There are 8,820,000 school pupils in England alone. If there is no social distancing in schools (which there can't be in many schools) and no precautions such as masks, just one infected child is going to result in dozens of further infections, not only amongst pupils and staff, but families as well.

In Chicago, two infected children in one school resulted in 150 further infections. Unless there's some mitigation, we're going to be back into infections rising exponentially.

Injuries to children don't result in injuries to other children and their families. That's the big difference.

Education cannot be dine as normal because the government has sent out a massive list detailing the precautions that schools have to take.

I think the analogy with accidents to children travelling to and from school does not hold water as getting run over is not infectious and is confined to the individual.

Risk is something we face everywhere every day, we have to live with it.
Regarding schools, the biggest risk to a child (teachers too) is traveling to school, far more get injured on the journey to school, sending children to school we accept that risk. There are over 1000 children injured going to school every month so risk of a child catching Covid 19 and becoming seriously ill is much lower than that.

So let’s be realistic unless there is a serious outbreak at a school education should be done as normal.

Apologies, should read "three stage risk assessment in my above post. ??

Gillybob no one could agree with you more in regard to having to state the bloody obvious when carrying out a risk assessment in these times. Problem is if that stating of the obvious is not carried out and an incident occurs, some smart ass solicitor at an industrial tribunal will take any employer apart.

By example to the above, about twenty years ago a normal there stage numerical risk assessment for the road transport industry would run to six or seven pages at a maximum. Today that same risk assessment will normally run to eleven or twelve pages at minimum.

Due to the covid crisis the situation has in recent weeks become even worse. Adjusting workplace safety regimes to allow for changes due to Covid-19 seemed complex enough with the whole regime in some workplaces having to be completely re-worked. However, once thought through generic risk assessments could be brought forward to cover the entire number of employees.

What has now come about nonetheless is that employers have become aware that employees who are overweight, are members of the BAME community or have underlining health issues are at a higher risk of incurring the infection and should they do so are at much greater risk of very serious illness.

That the Health & safety executive are stating should be included in any risk assessment. How we as companies involved industrial safety are supposed to work through the above situation no one has laid out. It means that many employees in a workplace will be required to have an individual risk assessment for each regular work operation they carry out.

How much individual percentage weighting will be required in those risk assessments for the above groups we are still waiting on the H&SE to come forward with.

A nightmare it is. Good for the company balance sheet, it most certainly is though.

Callistemon no we were lucky. She was crying and upset, another child told me. We were almost at the ferry terminal (only across the Tyne-we went there and back). I was thinking how I would have to send 30 yr2s back to school with TA and mums when I remembered about Houdini and tensed muscles being bigger. I made her relax the arm and let me control it, then I bent it and carefully eased it out. But it always amused me- all the risk assessments couldn't have forseen it.
I did think if a proper risk assessment was done into the hazards in a primary classroom-snot, vomit etc not to mention children with behaviour problems who throw things or break things you would probably have to close down every school.

To be honest at least Trishers jncident was dramatic, I managed to oversee a child who got their hand firmly stuck in a shape shorter.

trisher

They do gillybob but they are also much more unpredictable-hence the ferry incident. The children were actually sitting in seats on the ferry because the Head had become concerned about a recent boat accident and decided (after looking at the risk assessment) that if the trip was to go ahead children should not be allowed to stand on the deck as they had other years, but must sit in the seats. The stuck arm was the result.

I'm itching to know how they released her - did they have to unscrew the seat?

I'm not fully qualified trisher and don't pretend to be . I've been doing this job for over 25 years and we do come across the same things time after time and for anything out of the ordinary I use a specialist firm for guidance. As you say a lot of it is common sense.

gillybob I just hope you are fully qualified to do the risk assessment on them. I wasn't apparently, although I think if you can read and have a basic knowledge of probability you are over half way there. To think of all the things I did before there was any such thing as risk assessing.

Well it certainly sounds a lot like my experiences with (so called) responsible adults trisher. We always have to assume that an idiot someone will try to put their hand into a running motor or blade and will try to outwit the light guards with a long broom handle. Honestly some of things people do.

Pretty much Lucky although we work with the customer and they pretty much tell us the level of idiot we are dealing with. Then I can really go to town pointing out the bleedin' obvious risk that even a primary school aged child wouldn't try.

Oh gilly - that sounds like hard work - and no doubt you would be the ones to carry the can if something goes wrong.

They do gillybob but they are also much more unpredictable-hence the ferry incident. The children were actually sitting in seats on the ferry because the Head had become concerned about a recent boat accident and decided (after looking at the risk assessment) that if the trip was to go ahead children should not be allowed to stand on the deck as they had other years, but must sit in the seats. The stuck arm was the result.

There is a very great deal of risk assessing going on when dealing with unpredictable primary age children!

Yes Lucky I can imagine its much like some of the risk assessments I do on a new machine or process when the operators haven't got the common sense they were born with . In fact I would expect children of primary school age might have more sense !

In our school everyone has to have basic training in assessing risk, including the governors. There is a very great deal of risk assessing going on when dealing with unpredictable primary age children!

Grandad1943
Therefore the risk assessments that trisher has so proudly carried out are not worth the paper they are written on under the current legislation of the United Kindom
I knew that but no one could tell the powers that be. The risk assessment on my school trip took no account of the child who managed to get her arm stuck between two seats on a ferry. (Perhaps I should have warned them not to pick up anything which fell on the floor)
I am also very surprised that a profession that is always advising that the children's safeguarding is paramount to the education sector allowed an unqualified and untrained person to undertake such risk analysis if safety is everything in that sector?
The problem is Grandad1943 that teachers will move about and if they arrive in a school that has done the risk assessment already they won't get any until it comes around again. By which time they may have moved again.
Incidently I also ran an event for a national charity when I first retired I think my Risk Assessment training for that was a couple of hours. So it's not just teaching.

The ultimate employers of all those teachers you don't think capable of carrying out a risk assessment are the government.