school workshops safety

[lurker]

http://press.hse.gov.uk/2017/london-cou ... ol-injury/

The fine would have funded 10 years worth of technician time.
I've a nasty feeling that rather than now fund a trained technician the knee jerk will be to blame "H&S gone mad" and stop such activities.

Still, there is always meeja studies

 

[acewoodturner]

I find that the excuse that the teacher wasn't trained to recognise the possible dangers of using a belt sanding machine to be a bit flimsy to say the least. I wouldn't trust him or her to run any future classes if that is their skill level! Sounds like the council has stitched them up as an excuse for not providing a technician more likely.

Mike

 

[lurker]

No one "blamed" the teacher, Mike.
Its the responsibility of an employer to ensure an employee's competence before setting them to work.
You will note the lad got his "on the job training" from another 12 year old :roll:

Personally I'd have had the CEO of the local authority in the dock to explain his/her mismanagement.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The teacher should be fined and out of a job. He's supposed to be competent, he wouldn't be employed if all the boxes weren't ticked. It is no one's fault but his. (I wonder what on earth they were doing with a belt sander in a school workshop anyway.)

 

[woodbrains]

The teacher should be fined and out of a job. He's supposed to be competent, he wouldn't be employed if all the boxes weren't ticked. It is no one's fault but his. (I wonder what on earth they were doing with a belt sander in a school workshop anyway.)

Hello,

Belt sanders are petty much ubiquitous in school workshops, don't know why you'd think they aren't/shouldn't be a piece of school kit.

There should have been a technician present, there are too many pupils in a class for just one adult to supervise during a practical lesson.

As far as training given from another pupil, peer mentoring is a teaching technique that is used a lot, but still should have been done in the presence of a technician.

Safety training is obligatory every five years. If the teacher had not been trained it is the employers fault.

Incidentally, the new curriculum means that D and T teachers can come from many different backgrounds. I personally think it is bonkers, but it is highly possible that a textiles teacher could be teaching a woodwork based practical. It happens in the schools I have seen, and regularly in the one I am currently at.

It is also possible that the student involved here was messing about. That happens a lot, too, no matter how many times pupils are instructed the correct way, there are always some who think they know better and do something they shouldn't, you need eyes in the back of your head, sonetimes.

Mike.

 

[pcb1962]

The teacher should be fined and out of a job. He's supposed to be competent, he wouldn't be employed if all the boxes weren't ticked. It is no one's fault but his.

Rubbish

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuting said the teacher had not received adequate training to recognise that the machine was in an unsafe condition or recognise the risk of allowing pupils to use the machinery unsupervised and without suitable training

Hardly the teacher's fault that he hadn't been adequately trained, nor that he didn't have a technician available, a big part of whose role would be to see that the students are using the machinery safely.

 

[lurker]

The teacher should be fined and out of a job. He's supposed to be competent, he wouldn't be employed if all the boxes weren't ticked. It is no one's fault but his. (I wonder what on earth they were doing with a belt sander in a school workshop anyway.)

Sorry I don't agree.
As I said earlier, it is the employer's duty to ensure the teacher was competent
How is any teacher, these days able to attain workshop comptence?
Those that have it have left because they are so undervalued.

 

[lurker]

Mike (woodbrains),

When you say textiles, is that what we used to call needlework?

Maybe you ought to make sure your "head" sees this HSE document might do your standing some good.

I had not realised you teach WW, I both admire you and think you must be quite mad at the same time :lol:

 

[custard]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular case every fine is another nail in the coffin for hand skills/craft training within schools, and that's just a dreadful shame.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The teacher should be fined and out of a job. He's supposed to be competent, he wouldn't be employed if all the boxes weren't ticked. It is no one's fault but his. (I wonder what on earth they were doing with a belt sander in a school workshop anyway.)

Sorry I don't agree.
As I said earlier, it is the employer's duty to ensure the teacher was competent
How is any teacher, these days able to attain workshop comptence?
Those that have it have left because they are so undervalued.

The chance of an unqualified teacher being employed in the first place (other than under fraudulent pretences, which would be a totally different case) I would have thought in this box ticking age was absolutely zilch. The guy was seriously negligent - why is it someone else's fault?
Besides which, it's easily proved - have they record of of his qualifications or not? If not then yes, someone else is to blame as well.

 

[lurker]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular case every fine is another nail in the coffin for hand skills/craft training within schools, and that's just a dreadful shame.

Not least for those of us who have to mentor them when they arrive at the workplace with their shiney engineering honours degrees tucked under their arms.
Its a bit embarrasing doing "righty tighty and lefty loosey" with 25 year olds :roll:

 

[woodbrains]

The chance of an unqualified teacher being employed in the first place (other than under fraudulent pretences, which would be a totally different case) I would have thought in this box ticking age was absolutely zilch. The guy was seriously negligent - why is it someone else's fault?
Besides which, it's easily proved - have they record of of his qualifications or not? If not then yes, someone else is to blame as well.

Hello,

It is not about unqualified, it is about subject specialists. There are no subject specialists needed for D and T. I'm not saying it is the case here, but a qualified teacher is not the same as a subject specialist. You can get a degree, do a PGCE and become a qualified teacher. I have known people with degrees in special effects, architectural interiors, fashion and textiles get PGCE's and teach product design in a woodworking/metalworking classroom. The state of education is ridiculous.

Mike.

As for custard' statement about the handskill coffin being nailed shut, it would have already if anyone knew how to use a hammer!

 

[Ian down london way]

As someone who hasn't been 'trained' in safety in the workshop at all (but lots of experience, including attending a number of professionally run courses in doing different aspects of woodwork ), I feel I should say a couple of things.
1) It is the employers fault for not checking that appropriate training has been given to the teacher, and to therefore let him supervise the kids without such training - witness that the teacher wasn't prosecuted.
2) As someone whose main accident in my own workshop was sanding ply where the gap between the support and the belt was wider than the ply (and also suffered the same accident, although without the need for amputation - I sanding off the nail and nail bed down about 8mm in about 1/4 of a second - couldn't use that finger to type with for 9 months) - that the potential for this kind of accident doesn't come with experience alone - it needs safety training.

 

[DiscoStu]

Well the HSE finds the teacher to not be adequately trained. This doesn't mean that he doesn't have the correct teaching qualification. I don't know, maybe Woodbrains can clarify if you have to have extra qualifications on top of that to take a class in CDT or PE or Catering etc?

I certainly know my daughter has been taught catering from a history teacher so I'm not sure how that works.

It could be that the teacher was at fault and should have done more but 30 kids in a class, some messing about, some using the laser cutter, some soldering, some using a sander, some glue guns etc etc how can you guarantee safety? You can't. Accidents do happen and sometimes we just shouldn't be looking to blame people.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pcb1962]

Accidents do happen and sometimes we just shouldn't be looking to blame people.

You blame someone if it was their job to ensure that all reasonable steps had been taken to ensure the safety of the participants.
In this case that would have at least meant making a trained technician available to assist the (untrained) teacher.

 

[lurker]

Accidents do happen and sometimes we just shouldn't be looking to blame people.

You blame someone if it was their job to ensure that all reasonable steps had been taken to ensure the safety of the participants.
In this case that would have at least meant making a trained technician available to assist the (untrained) teacher.

exactly
AND, I maintain that someone was the CEO of the local authority.

 

[whiskywill]

You will note the lad got his "on the job training" from another 12 year old :roll:

There is no mention in the report of the age of the pupil who instructed the 12 year old.

 

[Biliphuster]

Fines like this to public bodies are completely pointless. The teacher doesn't care, not his money. The head doesn't care, not his money, there are no shareholders to care, the government are basically fining themselves.

The proper thing to do is find out who was to ensure the teacher had proper training and hold them accountable. People respond to incentives, you need to target properly to get the desired results.

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Feel absolutely dreadful for the child and their family.

I was reading about a similar case the other day. Details below:
This would have been shared with secondary schools and with teachers via their professional organisations for DT. I am not saying that the sander was incorrectly set up (ie too large a gap again) but it is scary to think that after serious sanding accident within the past five years - children would be left pretty much to their own devices on a similar machine.


05/11/2012 - School fined after pupil hurt in design and technology lesson

A Solihull school has been fined after an 11-year-old pupil suffered serious hand injuries in a design and technology lesson.
The year seven student from Alderbrook School was using a bench sanding machine when his hand became trapped between the rotating face of the sanding disc and the machine's table edge.
As a result of the incident on 6 October last year the pupil needed specialist surgery to repair tendon damage to the fingers of his left hand. He was off school for several weeks during which time he continued to study at home while recuperating from hand surgery.
As part of this recovery he has required physio. However, he still suffers pain in cold weather and doesn't have full range of movement in his fingers.
An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that although the machine had guarding in place, it was designed for use by adults. So the gap between the disc face and the table edge was big enough to trap a student's hand.
Solihull Magistrates' Court heard today (5 November) that the school had carried out a generic risk assessment for the machine that highlighted entrapment as a potential hazard. However, it failed to seek advice from the manufacturer and had made no attempt to adapt the machine for safe use by its students, whose experience and hand size is different to the normal recognised user.
Alderbrook School, of Blossomfield Road, Solihull, was fined £3,500 and ordered to pay £5,000 in costs after pleading guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 for failing to ensure the safety of pupils.
After the hearing HSE inspector Karl Raw said:
"Health and safety management for design and technology within Alderbrook was not of the expected standard. Guidance was out of date, risk assessments were generic and concerns raised in a 2010 audit by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council relating to this had not been addressed.
"This prosecution is not about schools abandoning or being stopped from allowing pupils to use machines. It is about sensible assessment of risk given the age and maturity of school pupils.
"In order to do this, schools need to have in place a strong culture towards health and safety with a regular review of risks and procedures. That did not happen in this case, leaving an 11-year-old boy with a very painful injury."

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Apparently it was a Morrisflex belt sander. Comprehensive information available online and linked to schools and Design Technology safe practice documents.

I would imagine year seven pupils would be allowed on scrollsaws, pillar drills and sanders and not much else.