Worksafe at Schools - Protection of Staff, Students, Visitors and Contractors

Action Guide 8: Protection Of Staff, Students, Visitors And Contractors

Introduction

Schools are required to implement and maintain health and safety management systems to ensure:

• That no one in the school or vicinity is harmed or causes harm to others. Schools also inherit obligations
• That no contractors are harmed or cause harm while doing any work they are engaged to do

Schools are also required to take all practicable steps to ensure that no harm comes to any contractor or employee of a contractor while doing work they are engaged to do for the school. Contractors and subcontractors as employers also have duties to their employees (or if an individual, duties of a self-employed person).

Equally it is important to ensure that the actions of any contractors or sub-contractors do not create hazards or harm to students, staff and visitors.

In addition, schools must take all practicable steps to ensure that:

• No action or inaction of any employee harms any other person, including students
• People at a school with the consent of the Board, or undertaking work for the Board, are not harmed by any hazard

In addition, schools must warn people of any significant hazards at the school and clearly identify the roles and responsibilities of students, school employees, visitors and contractors.

Roles And Responsibilities

According to the Ministry of Education's Health and Safety Code of Practice for State Primary, Composite and Secondary Schools, which is based on the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2002, the school has specific health and safety responsibilities for the entire school community. These are as follows:

Students

The School's responsibility towards students (as specified in the Ministry Code) centres on keeping them safe from hazards and ensuring they are not harmed by the action of staff. This can largely be addressed by provision of information and promotion of good staff health and safety practices.

STUDENT INDUCTION
When the student enters the school, there is an opportunity to provide information about health and safety in the school as part of orientation activities.

Information could cover:

• Basic health and safety concepts (taking into account ages and abilities)
• How to recognize and report hazards
• Awareness of hazards in the school environment
• Awareness of evacuation procedures
• Awareness of fire drills
• School safety procedures (e.g. for use of cooking equipment, cleaning equipment, swimming pool)
• Location of first aid supplies and emergency contact numbers

The school also has a responsibility to provide students and visitors with health and safety information on an ongoing basis. This could include signs and posters, which are:

• Displayed in areas where people enter the school or school facilities
• Displayed in areas where students gather
• Meaningful to the target groups
• Appropriately sited in potentially hazardous areas e.g. playgrounds, kitchens, swimming pools
• Provided in non-English language versions if appropriate
• Appropriately illustrated with pictures and diagrams

STUDENT REPRESENTATION AND PARTICIPATION
Where possible, the school should encourage student representation in groups managing health and safety in the school and/or participation in consultation on health and safety issues.

HEALTH AND SAFETY INFORMATION
Health and safety procedures and information needs to be provided to all visitors.

Parents/guardians/whanau this information can be provided:

• When their child enrols at the school, possibly in a handbook
• In school newsletters

For other visitors, this can be achieved through:

• Parent/teacher meetings
• School induction programmes
• Through visitor responsibilities handout
• Through appropriate signs and displays

SCHOOL VISITOR INDUCTION
All visitors to the school need to be inducted onto the site (except parents doing pick-ups and drop-offs at the beginning and end of the day).

Induction should involve signing visitors into the school when they arrive, and signing out as they leave (some schools may also want to provide an identification tag that visitors wear while in the school grounds.)

Information required from visitors is:

• Name
• Title/role
• Who they're visiting
• Time in, and Time out

SCHOOL SIGNAGE
All entrances to the school should clearly indicate the location of the visitor reception area. The sign/s could say, `All visitors please report to reception/the school office'.

Reception/office staff must be trained on the visitor induction programme.

When signage has been established, the school should send a special notice to parents advising them of the following:

• "Pick up and drop off" points
• Health and safety protocols
• Visitor register
• Worksafe at School Guide

Discretion should be used for regular visitors dropping off or picking up goods from school e.g. couriers.

School Visitors

Special arrangements may need to be made in respect of school-based marae for the health and safety of those who may be on-campus overnight and at other times when the school is closed.

Similar procedures will apply to all school groups using the school buildings as accommodation. Even when the group is not related directly to the school, some process for informing occupants of basic safety issues and confirming that access and emergency exits are available should be in place.

Other hazards to both health and safety may arise where food is being cooked, stored or prepared on-campus, or where large groups bring extra pressure on limited facilities designed to cater for smaller numbers of staff and students.

Signs, checklists and information sheets for visitors need to be clearly understood and consider language literacy, vision or hearing issues or other variables.

Voluntary Workers

Voluntary workers are specifically mentioned in the Ministry of Education's Health and Safety Code of Practice, and are classified as `employees'. Voluntary workers must be exposed to the same training and induction processes as teaching and other staff.

The school will need to identify and address any additional needs and characteristics of this group e.g. ensuring voluntary workers have similar access to health and safety information/training.

There are two levels of responsibility for organisations involving volunteers:
The general duty:

• All organisations that utilise the work of volunteers have a duty of care to provide for the safety of those volunteers. That duty requires them to put in place safety arrangements appropriate to the tasks performed. There are no penalties applying to this in the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2002.
• The level of responsibility applies where the volunteer is e.g. fundraising, assisting with sports, or assisting with other recreational activities offsite.

Duties for employers:
Additional responsibilities apply where the volunteer performs work that is similar to employment, even though it is not paid work. E.g. the employer has approved the work, the work is of an ongoing and regular basis and the work is integral to the employer's business activity. In this case the organisation is subject to the same responsibilities as if it were an employer/employee relationship (and the volunteer has the same responsibilities as a paid employee).

Contractors

All contractors, including relief teachers, working during school hours, need to be police vetted through the NZ Teachers Council. Information regarding police vetting is available at http://www.teacherscouncil.govt.nz

Schools need to ensure that their contractor management procedures address both:

• Contractors engaged in a large project, e.g. builders, who will be subject to supervision and monitoring clauses in their contract
• Contractors undertaking work on a regular basis, but who may or may not have a formal contract. There is a diverse range of such contractors, including cleaners, lawn-mowing contractors, repair-people - electricians, plumbers, psychologists, itinerant teachers, RTLB, speech therapists

CONTRACTOR'S HEALTH AND SAFETY HISTORY
When engaging a contractor the school needs to check that the contractor has a satisfactory health and safety record (see Action Guide 8, Toolkit 11A).

The contractor should provide:

• Evidence of relevant work experience
• Evidence of appropriate qualifications - only registered trades people must be hired
• A copy of their own Health and Safety Plan (where relevant)
• Examples of how they manage their own health and safety at work (e.g. identifying hazards, use of protective clothing, warning signs for other people, etc.)
• Their injury/incident history

CONTRACTOR INDUCTION TRAINING AND INFORMATION
When any contractor begins work at the school, there needs to be an induction procedure to ensure they have the necessary information to keep themselves safe, and avoid causing harm to others.

This could be achieved by providing the contractor with an information pack which outlines identified hazards in the area that they will be working. The contractor needs to be made aware that their health and safety performance will be monitored and reviewed on completion of the contract. Records must be kept of information and training provided to contractors.

The school must be familiar with the work that the contractor is about to complete. This will require the school to obtain information from the contractor including:

• The name of the nominated contact person (from both parties)
• Information from the school about known hazards that may affect the contractor or their employees
• Information from the contractor about hazards they may bring on site or create
• Procedures for reporting hazards and injuries and incidents
• Emergency and first aid procedures
• Any work permit procedures
• What safety equipment is required
• What areas of the school will need to be restricted
• Any additional school rules that the contractor will need to adhere to
• Any work that needs to be notified to OSH. The prescribed form is available from the OSH website.

SETTING UP A WRITTEN CONTRACT
Contractors should be formally engaged with a written contract. Ensure that the contract covers the following (see Action Guide 8, Toolkit 11B):

• The Contractor agrees to comply with all legal requirements
• The Contractor agrees to complete Induction Training with the Principal/Health and Safety Coordinator
• The Contractor agrees to use specific work practices required by the school
• The Contractor and their employees shall be fully trained, qualified and have current certification for their work as required by law
• The Contractor and their employees shall use safe practices to identify, minimise and monitor hazards in the workplace
• The School shall have power of inspection and audit at any time
• The School shall have power to stop work if health and safety provisions are not met
• The Contractor and the school's employees shall report injuries and incidents using the school's reporting procedures

MONITORING CONTRACTORS' PERFORMANCE
OSH recommends the following steps to monitor the way the contract work is being undertaken and to identify problems before injuries or incidents occur.

• Raise issues that require attention by the contractor for any observed unsafe work practices
• Conduct regular inspections
• Investigate all injuries and incidents
• Have regular meetings to review health and safety performance
• Undertake post-contract evaluations with the contractor