When it comes to school rules for our children, even the strictest of parents can fall foul of a rebellion gene that springs into action. Whether its rules around uniform, subject content or regulation of bathroom breaks, often a schools well-meaning intentions for school rules are met with outrage, petitions and an increase in Spotify downloads of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control …
Teacher, leave those kids alone!

However, if there was to be a competition of School Rules that drive parents crazy then Health and Safety would undoubtedly top the list.

Headlines that have parents rolling their eyes include:

“Health and Safety’ concerns see School Monkey Bars closed in case a child grazes knee”

“School bans running in playground as ‘Health and Safety’ goes mad”.

Often these stories come from overseas where there is an ambulance chasing culture that is too inclined to blame someone else for anything that goes wrong and where people sometimes hide behind legislation when they misuse the health and safety term in the fear of being sued.

In New Zealand where we have ACC and a no blame culture we almost have the opposite problem where no-one takes responsibility for things that go wrong, “accidents just happen” and school Principals are reported in the media as “reluctantly tightening up Health and Safety rules.”

A story about school playground silliness

Liskeard is a small market town in South East Cornwall, England with a population of just over 8,000 people.  I remember it as quite pretty with not much else going on. Certainly on most days it really isn’t worthy of any particular media attention.

Liskeard is home to Hillfort Primary School, one of two Primary schools in the area. Recently Hillfort Primary School hit international headlines. Not because a meteorite fell on it or because of one of the students discovered it is in fact 43, not 42 that is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). No, the reason that Hillfort Primary School hit international headlines was because of HEALTH AND SAFETY!

In clarifying rules around playground safety and rules pertaining to running, the school enraged parents, who managed to gather ‘more than 150 signatures’ on a petition that demanded “Do not allow ‘health and safety’ to remove the liberty to spontaneously run in the playground during imaginative and child-led play.”

Ahead of a myriad of other international news that could have made our shores, this news was hot topic number one as people called, texted and emailed their favourite radio station with their horror stories where ‘Health and Safety’ had been the Grinch that Stole Christmas.

Whilst I drove myself to a PTFA meeting, I listened with curious interest. Why on earth were people so adverse to rules designed to keep their children and the teachers that look after them, safe? And why were there so many otherwise rational adults so ready to believe the rating grabbing headlines rather than the plethora of information put out by the Ministry of Education, WorkSafeNZ and specialists like All About People that advise schools to keep calm and keep climbing trees?

I also had a burning desire to meet this ‘Health and Safety’ that everyone was quick to cite as being a living breathing, joy killer!

Working in the business of Health and Safety I was pretty confident that this ‘Health and Safety’ guy (or girl) was being misrepresented.  It was then that another popular song (this one by rapper Eminem) sprung to mind:

“Cause I’m Health and Safety, yes I’m the real Safety
All you other Health and Safety’s are just imitating
So won’t the real Health and Safety please stand up,
Please stand up, please stand up?”

(Ok so I changed the words a bit but it reminded me of what’s really important here).

Health and Safety legislation exists solely to prevent injury or harm. We should all be good buddies with Health and Safety and not knock or denigrate its intentions.  To this end we must also be ready to challenge stupid decisions made in the name of health and safety. We should all be ready to stand up for it and not let imposters who through poor or willful wrong interpretation and application of health and safety legislation make people cynical about the need for laws to protect people in the workplace.

As consultants and advisors in this industry we have a strong responsibility to give our customers and the public the confidence, skills and tools to be able to make sensible, practical decisions that allow their team to go home safely at the end of the day.

So kids, #keepclimbingtrees

Managing your risk properly means confident decisions can be made around your Health and Safety policies and procedures.

Use this free Risk Assessment tool to help you work out where your focus should be and avoid the need for a ‘cotton wool’ culture. 

Cath Copley, Business Development Manager 

For more information, contact us on 0800 023 789 or email info@allaboutpeople.co.nz