School telling us to remove nut trees from community orchard

[Calling]

We are in a local voluntary group and local people planted an orchard in the grounds of a school, for the school.

Now, the school has written to say that we have to remove the nut trees because one pupil has a bad nut allergy.

There are fruit and nut trees, that the local people planted some years ago and we have put a lot of work into weeding and watering. The yield was actually for the kids and we are volunteering with the school with and nature sessions outside.

Before anyone says we are potential child killers, we do understand the importance of safety. There is a management plan in place, but the school has been asked by a parent to remove our trees.
I do feel disheartened - nobody in the school said no to nut trees originally.

The school trust, which has no interest in nature at all.
They once demanded that we pay them money, so we said don't you realise that we planted many trees for free for the benefit of the school, you own them and we look after them and sometimes the kids go outside and have nature sessions which they are very engaged with.

The new guidelines do not tell schools to act like this. The focus is on managing emergencies. What is mandatory is :- a clear, published allergy safety policy on the school website.Regular, mandatory training for school staff on recognizing allergic reactions and responding to emergencies.Keeping spare, in-date AAIs on site as an emergency backup. Maintaining updated IEPs for pupils with severe allergies.

This is madness.

What nut tree is it?

Walnut I presume?

It’s fiendishly hard to get the nuts out if their shells.

There is a soft shell and a hard shell. The child won’t be able to get to the nuts without a hammer or a knife, and I doubt they will be in possession of those. Or unless they are a squirrel in disguise.

Felling trees fur this is utter nuttery.

This!

Again, have you read the law?

I suspect not. The DfE don't reccommend a nut ban.

There was a poor boy that had a severe cheese allergy. Secondary age. He died after someone threw cheese at him! So sad. How severe is this allergy?! There are scales, personally I would not enroll my child into a school with an allergy so severe that trees needed to be felled! How will they get on in life, work etc as they are older?

yes i have. thank you. All allegens cannot be removed ie milk. However, if you have a child has a allergy they got to ensure the child is kept safe. Commom sense needs to be applied. Having a nut tree is very dangerous, if there is a child with nut allergies. There'll be children brining in nuts into their classes. Schools have a duty of care to safeguard that child, hence the tree has to go

Can the volunteers just cut off the flowers or immature nuts before they ripen and take them off school grounds before they fall to ground and cause an issue?
Yeah, among the many many* volunteers that show up to green space projects, I'm sure there are many prepared to spend hours and their personal reputation on ensuring that a tree is clear of allergens on a daily basis.

*2 octogenarians and a toddler

They likely don't. School shouldn't assume knowing how to plant and maintain a tree means you can safely cut it, particularly given the allergen issue. They're not the same skill. I wouldn't do it.

Just say no. Say if the school want to they can but you’ll expect reimbursement.

ask why the parent sent their kid to a school with a nut tree in the first place

The education should still happen of course, but you can’t realistically expect all peers to remember at all times, especially when you are talking about children. Hierarchy of risk control is eliminating risk where you can, and then managing any residual that remains. So still my POV would be remove the trees and still educate and teach to help manage any risks that can’t reasonably be eliminated in a wider regard. At the end of the day we are talking about danger to a child’s health and life here and I would just have an abundance of caution and remove what risks I could and back up with education on top

This is the problem I think. The official guidance and educational establishment response and media coverage are different.

Many people are lazy, if you are not an allergy parent you are not reading the guidance. You instead rely on the school and media communications. Schools are covering their arses. Same with some restaurants who have gone very extreme with allergy catering in response to the clear labelling law (can't remember what that one is called).

While I do understand very much the concern the parents must experience around this, I do think that there is a tendency at the moment to expect everyone else, including strangers, to make increasing accommodations when in fact the most practical and useful thing for the child is really to learn the skills of managing the risks. It's hard, I guess, if the child is still very little, and of course it would be dreadful if the child were exposed, but the world does need to be navigated. All children have to learn not to run in front of cars, or jump off cliffs, lick knives etc.

I have a friend with food allergies and she is becoming increasingly irascible about restaurants and cafes not following her ideal arrangements, whether it be what they don't sell, or what they do sell, even as those places are in fact more accommodating than ever.

@Calling It sounds crazy tbh. Surely the child has just to stay away from the orchard. If child and school staff are informed they should be able to manage it.

In our primary children often bring in bars that contain nuts or homemade cakes that contain nuts- there is no way to come around it.

Not everyone has an abundance of schools to choose from, or in fact any schools to choose from. For example you live rurally, don't have transport and there's no public transport, or a school is named in a child's EHCP.

That is the opposite of what you are supposed to do. Saying a school is nut free (which it never will be)can lull everybody into a false sense of security and kill a child. You educate all the children about allergies and follow what the government has actually now told schools to do under Benedict’s Law.

In our primary school and drama club we are strictly but free. The minute they go to secondary school no one gives a shit. Have as many nuts as you like.

Yes! I feel that the parents who have demanded the removal of the trees are entitled. But I am not unsympathetic to the risks.

Exactly.

And a soft shell that is hard to remove without getting discoloured fingers.

We have a child at school who is allergic to Walnuts, we unfortunately have a walnut tree onsite. Luckily it's in a location that students can avoid and this child has been kept out of this area.

I'm actually surprised they didn't have to remove it. But I'm assuming the location meant it was avoidable so not necessary.

If the children are playing amoung them I can understand the concern. After all nuts don't just stay on the tree and children will pick up everything.

Although I would be asking the school for support in dealing with this as its their problem. If you weren't there then they would have to pay someone.

There are lots of poisonous plants and fungi about that can kill for example daffodils - children have to learn to stay away from plants and fungi that are not safe. Fungi in particular can pop up overnight so may not be seen by staff. I remember age 7 being warned about giant hemlock at school. Allergies might mean cracking open a hazelnut nut and eating it is dangerous but so is munching on a daffodil or tulip bulb for all children and lots of schools have them growing in their grounds each spring.

Nut trees aren't particularly dangerous. A quick Google will tell you that. The child can avoid the tree, peers can be taught not to crack the shells and the staff trained to look for a reaction.

The risk is really minimal from the tree itself. It's far more risky for a peer to have a Brunch bar. I know which of those is more likely.

They can always homeschool.

No-one will tell me what the risks of nut trees are! Tree nuts are in hard shells and the kids don't go around with nut crackers.

The school is of course a nut-free zone.

I now (age 50) have a low level hazelnut allergy so I can eat nutella occasionally but I can’t eat actual hazelnuts.

When I was little we had a hazelnut tree in the garden, I loved playing in trees and whenever i played around it I would come up in itchy hives requiring antihistamine. My mum had the tree chopped as it was obviously our home.

My toddler has numerous nut allergies, crunching on nut shells recently had me a stressed.

I have to say a community garden being asked to remove a nut tree sounds like madness. Equally how involved are the school? How many nut allergy children? How mature is the tree? Could you create a nut tree section slightly fenced off - so no nut allergy enter zone?