Safety - A Shared Responsibility

This article was written by Gemma Periam, executive officer, Education Outdoors New Zealand Inc. It is reprinted online with permission from Education Today 1 (1) 2002.

The tragic events over the last 2 years in which students have died on school outdoor education activities have had an enormous impact on all of us, not least of all on the teaching profession. Reaction in many instances has led to a retraction of Education Outside the Classroom (EOTC) experiences offered by schools. Why? For a lot of reasons, but should we allow our fear of something going wrong overshadow the huge learning benefits of EOTC?

A broad strategy of professional development, resources, basic qualifications, some standards, and on-going support is required. All of these, if implemented, should improve expertise of teaching staff in outdoor safety management and hence lead to more safely run activities. It is encouraging that a number of organisations are working together currently to formulate a broad strategy for safety in EOTC.

This broad strategy is not the topic of this article, but during the process of developing it, all the different contributing factors that can compromise safety have been discussed at length. One of these is the tendency we have had to rely almost totally on the teacher or leader in charge to manage safety in an activity. Safety should not be the sole responsibility of the teacher/leader. It should be a shared responsibility among a number of different people – including students.

Consider the following scenario. The teacher/ leader in preparing for the activity, does all the right things – wanders around the site identifying all the hazards, checks equipment is adequate and up to standard, and writes up a comprehensive safety management plan. Often no-one else has been involved in this process. The teacher/leader issues a copy of their safety management plan to those who are helping with supervision and briefs them on their role. As the activity progresses, the teacher/leader ensures all the strategies for safe management are implemented throughout the activity.

This scenario is a common one and uses accepted good practise you may say, but this scenario can lead to those students and parents involved in the activity becoming totally reliant for their safety on the leader thinking and acting for them. The board of trustees and principal of the school, if they don't have simple and robust procedures in place to support their EOTC programme, rely on the teacher/leader's expertise in safe management to keep their students safe. Placing the responsibility for safety of an outdoor activity almost exclusively on the leader is not the safest scenario.

Parents/supervisors and students themselves can contribute their experience and ideas in the safety planning process. This allows them to take ownership of the safety management strategies they have identified, understand why they are important, and take responsibility for implementing them. Being included in the safety planning process encourages students and parents to think and act for themselves. If an unsafe situation arises, not only are they "tuned-in" to what may happen and hence what they need to do, but more importantly they are more likely to think and act to prevent such a situation developing in the first place.

Away from the actual event, other groups of people also have important roles in determining its safety. The sailboat NZ SOLE (Safe Outdoor Learning Experience) uses a simple analogy to explain the shared responsibility concept. The sailboat is steered, propelled, stabilised, or supported by different groups of people.

To maximise the success of the safe outdoor learning experience all these groups of people need to work together. If we remind ourselves that it is the students whom we are trying to educate and empower with skills, it seems logical to me that we involve them as much as possible in the entire process. In order to achieve this in our students the rest of us need to work together to promote a culture of safety in our school community.

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