This is Kevin.

Note: No hard hat or Hi-Vis required.

My Experience. I have worked in many different sectors and have ended up specialising in schools, public and private at all levels. I believe my experience in other sectors, such as facilities management, construction and behavioural change at Executive Level has helped me understand education better.

Kevin Clarke's Disjointed Ramblings on the subject of the World's View of Health and Safety, Why it is Wrong and What Needs to be Done to Make it Better.

My name's Kevin, and honestly, I don't like health and safety either. But I really do like sorting it out so it doesn't seem quite so annoying and prohibitive. Here's why...

I think the following:

1. Risk is part of life.
2. The education process is all about getting on better in life, therefore...
3. Risk management (sounds better than health and safety) is part of education!

When harm is realised we don't like it so we learn how to avoid it and at some point in our lives, it dawns on us that we can stop being harmed by avoiding things (and even people!) that cause us that harm and by listening to others who already knew that.

Simple cause and effect stuff really.

Teachers will often say to me,

"I know nothing about health and safety", 

and I somehow have to restrain myself before I respond as EVERYTHING they do has health and safety at the core, including the obvious items on the following...

'List of things that obviously have something to do with health and safety, despite what teachers say':

• Managing kids in the classroom. 'Don't swing on chairs', 'No running, please', 'Don't punch each other'. Why? Why not? It hurts = obey the rules for the good of your health and safety.
• Learn to tackle properly in rugby - so obvious I'm not explaining it.
• A good forward defensive stroke - as above; get it wrong, it hurts.
• Crossing a road with a group of pupils - STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, etc. Teaching kids to do dynamic risk assessment - brilliant!
• And as for Science and Design and Technology, well they are just one big festival of health and safety instruction in every single lesson! Wonderful!

So in summary, it's undeniable...

We all teach health and safety all the time!

BUT...

We do so in a culture of misconception, ambiguity, cynicism and misinformation about this beloved topic that makes it seem as though health and safety is the enemy of the modern world.

It's not - it can't be - we are all concerned about our health and we all want to keep ourselves safe. Fact.

So as they say at UPS, the challenge is in the delivery.

If we can steal ourselves away from the pre-held views about good old health and safety and think about how we can use it to motivate others by doing things more carefully, then try to apply it clearly, concisely, enthusiastically and with a genuine concern for those who we work with and educate and even think about how we can reinvent it, well then we have the opportunity to ensure the next generation is not adversely affected by those prejudices as many of us have been.

Once I worked out the above, I realised I don't actually hate heath and safety at all and I really, really want to help as many people as possible feel better about it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I do what I do. 

Nice things nice people say about us which are nice...