oneSource Health and Safety Team Logo

Classroom Health and Safety Checklist - An Introduction

Our entire world is full of hazards with varying degrees of risk, with potential outcomes ranging from the trivial to catastrophic events. Whilst acting in loco parentis schools need to ensure that the health and safety risks the children in their care are exposed to are suitably managed. As school children spend a considerable amount of their time at school in their classrooms, it is logical to ensure that these places are, and remain 'safe'. Health and safety management in schools isn't about the total elimination of risk. That objective is neither achievable nor desirable. It is about controlling the levels of health or safety risk to which children, staff and others are exposed at school to acceptable levels. One of the methods used to control the health and safety risks in school classrooms is by undertaking inspections. Health & safety inspections of school classrooms can identify hazards (things which can cause harm) and unsafe acts and omissions (people doing things in an unsafe manner).


Although health and safety inspections of school classrooms can be undertaken by just using a blank sheet of paper to record the findings, we have found that school staff prefer to work from an inspection checklist. A classroom health and safety checklist by definition is a list of items to check. This poses both benefits and disadvantages in terms of identifying health and safety concerns within the school. A school implementing the use of a classroom health and safety checklist would benefit from the consistency it would introduce. But the school would need to balance that against the fact that by their very nature checklists limit what the inspector looks for. Another issue for the school to consider is whether the staff they are getting to complete the classroom health and safety checklist appreciate what the questions actually mean (most school staff having received limited health and safety training). When designing our classroom health and safety checklist for schools we endeavoured to address the disadvantages mentioned above. Our classroom health and safety checklist provides links to further guidance to help school staff understand what the questions are expecting them to look for. It also addresses the limiting factor of a set questions. As an Organisation we are dedicated to improving school health and safety standards and have therefore made access to the checklist and its associated guidance free.


school teacher undertaking classroom health and safety inspection

How will the Health and Safety Classroom Checklist help me?

It has been designed to enable teaching staff to be able to undertake the regular health and safety inspections of their classrooms. These checks are often required by their employer's safety management systems. It is based on the Health & Safety Executive's classroom checklist, but has been fine-tuned based on the practical experience of oneSource's team of school health & safety advisers. By using the Classroom Health and Safety Checklist you will be able to quickly yet effectively check for the most common unmanaged hazards we encounter in our school and academy clients' classrooms. We know that teachers don't generally have the time to become health & safety experts, so have added links in each section to short information documents which explain what the questions are asking you to check. This is done using a combination of explanatory text and photographic examples. As much as possible we have limited the checks to issues which can be identified just by visual inspection and will be relevant each time you complete it.


By regularly completing the classroom health & safety checklist you will be helping to ensure that everyone who enters your classroom (including yourself) is less likely to have an accident. Undertaking the checks should only take a short amount of your time (5 to 10 minutes). Another option your School may wish to consider is getting teachers to inspect each others classrooms. The main benefit of this way of working is that it reduces familiarity blindness (our ability to ignore things because we see them every day).


What does the Checklist cover?

The Classroom Health and Safety Checklist is divided into nine sections which cover the common health & safety hazards encountered in school classrooms & teaching spaces. It has not been designed to cover specialist subject teaching where the health and safety hazards present are considerably greater (e.g. science, design & technology & art classrooms). The sections included are:


How to use the Checklist

Each of the first eight sections of the Classroom Health and Safety Checklist is divided into four columns, the first contains the questions, the second the link to the written advice and photographic examples, the third is for your answer to the question. Enter 'Y' for yes, 'N' for no or 'N/A' if the question isn't applicable to your classroom. The final column is for comments to expand on your answer. You will mainly enter text here when you have entered a 'N' answer to explain what the issues are.

The ninth section is different, there are no set questions included here. One of the biggest weaknesses of health and safety checklists is that the users can become totally focussed on what the questions are asking them to look for and therefore become oblivious to other hazards (we have witnessed people sometimes literally stepping over them!). For this section stop, take a few deep breaths, and then try to look around your classroom with fresh eyes. If you see anything you feel isn't quite right write it down, so it can be raised with the School's management team. There are no wrong answers here, what you see may or may not pose a health or safety risk (this can even vary between classrooms depending on the actual circumstances, for example the age of the students which use the classroom).


How often should I complete the Checklist?

How often you complete the Classroom Health and Safety Checklist is going to be predominantly driven by your school employer's requirements. This would normally be detailed in the organisation section of its health and safety policy document. The organisation section of the policy contains the health and safety responsibilities of staff which undertake safety critical tasks within the school. If your school has not defined a health and safety inspection regime for its classrooms, you may want to instigate one yourself to minimise the likelihood of accidents occurring in your classroom.


We would recommend that health and safety inspections of school classrooms are undertaken at least termly.


Links


We intend to keep developing the classroom health and safety checklist's supporting guidance, so that it provides further examples to aid teachers with their own inspections.