School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

They say that you really cannot make everyone happy at the same time. I believe this more than anything else in this world. If you are not convinced, just try to analyze every other thing that happens in your life – personal, social, and work related – and you will see that I am telling the truth.

Since this blog focuses on school safety, let us take a look at that issue. There are so many aspects to consider here, and so many players involved as well. Obviously, not everyone will have the same ideas as to how to resolve the issue. In fact, you will find that people differ so much that there will always be those who think that something is not right.

I just read an article at ITN, which talks about people thinking that safety measures are hindering the learning process. These people think that there is too much attention being lavished on school safety that the educational experience of children these days is suffering. You think I am exaggerating? Take a look at this:

Health and safety regulations are getting in the way of children’s progress, teachers have warned.
A survey of 585 school staff found that almost 44.3 per cent believe that health and safety regulations negatively affect pupils’ education.

Similar numbers said such regulations negatively affect pupils’ personal growth and that of the education workforce generally. Those questioned were asked to give an example of the most restrictive health and safety regulations they had experienced in school.

They included: footballs being banned from the playground in case of injury; a ban on running in the playground; having to wear goggles if using Blu-Tack; a ban on egg boxes being used in class due to the potential risk of Salmonella poisoning; wet grass stopping PE lessons; banning the three-legged race at sports day because it is dangerous and forcing Year 11 swimmers to wear armbands at a beach in France.

Judith Hackitt, chairman of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), said the examples cited were “frankly ridiculous”. She said: “Health and safety is blamed for a lot of things not going ahead, but they’re often about something else – high costs, an event that requires a lot of organising or fear of getting sued.

If you think about it, there is a point to the complaint. The rules that are cited above are indeed ridiculous! We all grew up with footballs in the playground. We all ran in the playground – what else is there to do?

Indeed, maybe we need to reassess things and check our priorities?

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