Risk Assessment

[kbo234]

RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS

They're new to me.

I've fairly recently taken on a new job teaching physics in a private school. When I asked to take a sixth form group to central London for a one-day revision course, the school said OK but I had to fill in risk assessment forms for the trip.

I shrugged my shoulders, accepted the forms and got on with trying to fill them in.

They were long, detailed and rather baffling. On one page there were many boxes into which I had to put numbers.

There were three columns, one for 'severity of risk' (enter a number 1 to 6), one for 'probability of occurrence' (enter a number 1 to 6) and a third column for the product of these two numbers (multiply them)....then a box at the bottom for the sum of these products. If this number was too big the trip was off.

Among the standard given risks, provided by the helpful designer of the form, was "Being accosted by unsavoury characters."

The mind boggles.....'accosted'........in what way exactly?.........'unsavoury'?........how unsavoury are our 'characters' allowed to get?


I mean.........if some degenerate psychopath were to grab one of our party, drag them up an alley and shag them up the arse I suppose that would have to be a 5. It couldn't be a 6 because being run over by a bus would, by all reason, have to be considered a worse outcome (surely only death could be a 6?...)
On the other hand if some stranger leered at the prettiest member of the party, that couldn't be put down as much more than a 1, could it?

What do you think yourself?......sometimes it's difficult being a teacher.

There were also boxes for entering possible risks not included by the form-creator. I had quite a bit of fun with these but finally decided, on reflection, to leave them blank.

Anyway, it turned out that I wasn't very good at filling these forms in........getting them handed back twice as unsatisfactory.

The management ended up providing me with someone else's successfully-completed risk assessment form as a guide.

Third time lucky!.....

.....but no! The person responsible for 'Health & Safety' came back to me one more time...."Kevin. The students aren't doing practical work while they're in London, are they?"

(Gulp, I think I know where this is going)
"I'm not sure."

"Well if they are you'll have to do a risk assessment for that too. Let me know."

After deciding that there would be no practical work involved I told this person......and that, to my blessed relief, was the end of the matter.

For that trip.

As I said I'm new to the school and am picking up the pieces on this course. Last week the students were still behind with their coursework write-ups as the deadline approached.

I stayed behind with them for five evenings in a row, mostly until 6pm but once until 9pm in the push to get them all to finish their work acceptably and on time.

A couple of days later the deputy head came to me.

"I believe you've been staying late with the students (O, the school are going to thank me for going beyond the call of duty)......did you fill in a risk assessment form for this?"

I was flabbergasted.

"What! You are joking aren't you?"

"Don't you know anything, Mr. B****. Don't you know that THE LAW REQUIRES IT?......if you stay behind after 5pm you have to fill in the form AND you must write to all the parents getting permission slips returned before you can even ALLOW a student to stay behind until such a time......and, furthermore Mr. ***** (the caretaker, or 'estate manager'......or as we call him "the gardener'.......did I say that this [everyone agrees] horrible little man was the 'health and safety officer for the school?) informs me that you've been driving the students home?"

"That's untrue. But what if I had?"
"You are not insured for this. The school is not insured. If you had a crash we could all be ruined by it. For God's sake, don't you think about the consequences, Mr B."

"I'll live with the consequences, whatever they are."

Actually on the way home one evening I had found one of the students in the car park unable to contact his mother (mobile phone was dead). He had no money and no way of making the 20 miles to his home. I drove him a mile to the nearest train station and gave him a fiver for a ticket home.

I told the deputy head who gave me a b*llocking that " The idea of some think-tank in central London, directed by some corporate reptile, deciding how I can and can't act in a school car-park was entirely loathsome to me and I'd rather be dead than fill in another one of those infernal risk assessments.
I won't be doing it.
I won't be going on any more trips.
I won't be staying behind late."

"That's fine."

.....there's an Ealing comedy waiting to be written here. I can't get over the fact that as a physics teacher, I'm expected to run everything I want to do past the gardener first.

If he shoves another one of those forms at me, it most certainly will not be filled in. I'd rather be sacked than touch another one of them.

More seriously......it is amazing, is it not, that the legislation that demands these actions was passed by the same people who voted for the invasion of Iraq.

What about filling in some risk assessment forms then, you bunch of ****s.

I have talked to staff about this issue. They all agree it is nonsense.....but are they prepared to refuse to co-operate......

.....well, no.

It is through measures like this that we, the people, the huddled masses, have been intimidated and made to feel isolated and helpless.

We need new some kind of new organisation to oppose all this kind of think-tank generated legal rubbish. Unions do nothing about any of this. They are part of the establishment. When the government says jump they say, how high. In education when some new monstrosity is dumped on our heads the unions don't say, "Let's all tell them f*** off", they say " We'll try and negotiate an extra training day for you."

We need some entirely new kind of revolution.

[eogz]

Hi KBO,

I know exactly how you feel, we have to risk assessments for any trips we do off site, I work in a Residential School.

We are going to training on tuesday about this, they have just changed the procedures, now if we want to do any activity which could be deemed as a serious risk we need to fill out and complete a risk assessment form a month in advance.

So if I plan a trip to Blackpool pleasure beach, were I could previously have done this on the day, I now have to do so a month in advance.

The joke of the whole thing is, because I work in a Residential School with many different kids of differing abilities, how the bloody hell can i tell who will be going on the trip? In a month's time they could be home with their families, grounded, unwell or any manner of things may happen. Aren't I mant to risk assess for every individual understanding that the kids I work with have complex needs!

It is all a bloody silly joke designed to limit the activites for young people on the basis that it just isn't safe, of the multitude of things can kill us, perhaps keeping kids locked in padded cells is the only answer to true safety, what *!

If I had a choice between 9/11 being exposed to the whole world and losing risk assessment forms forever, I'd have to go away and have a long think about it.

I'm with you 100% comrade....

[kbo234]

[paul wright]

Risk assessment? I'm in "caring" and have been filling in these damned things for a while. of course it's all paranoid created nonsense
I'd fill in one for us with our activities.
"Likely to be put on a list for subversive activities and may risk being detained in a rest and recreation camp in the near future"