Your legal responsibilities

Under health and safety legislation and regulations:

  • your employer has a responsibility for ensuring your safety in the workplace; and
  • you are responsible for ensuring the safety of learners in the classroom.

Your organisation will have a health and safety policy, and you should be familiar with it. Talk to your colleagues and to your Subject Learning Coach. Ask them what challenges they have come up against and how they have handled them.

Ask your manager for professional training in areas where you are unsure what best practice in health and safety should be.

Getting things right for learners means:

  • familiarising yourself with your organisation's policies and procedures on health and safety
  • putting these into practice in your sessions; and
  • noticing how learners conduct themselves and being ready to intervene where they put themselves or others at risk through unsafe practices.

Example of of good and unacceptable practice.

Good practice -

I'm absolutely adamant about jewellery. The protocol we give to learners at the start of the course states that wearing jewellery is not appropriate in this discipline. But if you don't keep reinforcing this, it steadily creeps in: first small earrings, then long ones, then bracelets and bangles. Before you know it, it's like the jewellery channel on TV. But the damage this stuff can do is significant - ripped earlobes, torn navels, facial gashes - need I go on.

Mercy, tutor, Keep fit.

Unacceptable practice -

It was my turn to serve. My opponent kept moving before the serve was complete, which is against the rules. I let it pass a few times, but then I said, "Would you mind not doing that because it's really off-putting." He came round to my side of the net. He was a big bloke, a lot bigger than me. He was shouting at first, but then he started pushing me, chest to chest. I stood my ground, but in the course of the pushing, my racquet got broken. The tutor didn't notice any of this. It was the others who got him off me. I went over and told the tutor what had happened, but she didn't do anything about it. I never went back.

Elliott, learner, Badminton.

For more detailed information on health and safety, read Health and Safety and Adult Learners in the Learning and Skills sector, published by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), April 2006. Click here: New browser window: www.safelearner.info/downloads/LSC_H&S 32pp Final v7.pdf

Also visit the LSC's 'Safe Learner' website – http://www.safelearner.info/ – and the Health and Safety Executive at http://www.hse.gov.uk/.