DfE misses an opportunity in their recent Advice on School Health and Safety

Handsam has written to client schools advising them that the recent reduction of formal government guidance from 160 pages to 8 pages may have gone too far in superseding all the 1998 guidance.

While broadly welcoming the DfE’s emphasis on common-sense rather than over-bureaucratic control and keenness to dispel the concern expressed by some teachers who worry about being prosecuted if an accident occurs on a school trip, teachers, Handsam feels, are not going to be encouraged by the Department’s only advice on civil liability which emphasises that legal action can be taken against members of staff for any negligence where the staff have not acted as ‘a prudent parent would have done’.

It might have been more reassuring if the government had taken the opportunity to point out to schools that courts have moved on considerably since the original concept of ‘the careful father’ was first aired by Mr Justice Cave in 1893. All the leading cases affirm that any action by a member of staff which was ‘within a range of reasonable responses’ would be a good defence.

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