Pond in nursery garden?

[Queen0fFeckingEverything]

My friend and I were chatting to someone at a toddler group today who mentioned in passing that one of the reasons they'd decided against the nursery attached to one of the local primary schools was that there is a pond in the nursery garden.

I thought that was a bit OTT at first but the HV who attends the group was listening, and she confirmed that there is indeed a completely uncovered and unfenced pond in the 'green area' of the nursery garden. Apparently it is in an area the children are always supervised in but its not actually separated from the rest of the grounds, its just a little wild corner type area with some bushes round it, so there's nothing to stop the children from getting to it if they want to.

Is that ok? I thought CMs couldn't be registered if they had a pond with no cover/fence, but are schools different?

Building a pond to teach them about water safety? Surely that is equivalent to letting them play unsupervised in a busy street to teach them about traffic safety? It takes one slip, one unsupervised minute. It is sheer madness.

The nursery where I work one of our daily checks is sweeping any pools of water that have accumulated in the tunnel or play house as a child can drown in an inch of water. I would refuse to work in a nursery with an open pond as with the best will in the world you can not watch every child every minute and some children would make it their mission to sneak away to the pond if they knew they were not allowed there.

I almost drowned falling into a pond (which was, ironically, in the middle of being drained so I wouldn't fall into it!) when I was 3. My kids wouldn't be going anywhere near that nursery.

I sincerely hope you don't allow your kids in the car whilst driving then if that's the way you feel about safety :)

The only stats I can find relate to differing age ranges, but it seems that around 2500 children under 16 die every year in cars, and on average 5 children under 5 years old die due to pond drownings.

So, balancing risk and likelihood, I think having a pond is no more dangerous than any other normal daily activity (such as driving) and I see no reason to prevent my kids learning about and enjoying watching the creatures in a pond! :)

Logically speaking, of course.

But to mitigate the danger you put a child in a car safety seat.

So the corresponding action would be to put a fence and gate or netting over the pond.

Yes I agree, I'll be putting up a tough mesh 4ft high fence with 4ft stakes (6ft stakes 2ft in the ground). It will be flexible rather than rigid so not easy to climb! But I'll definitely be taking it aside for supervised pond-watching. I like the idea of getting them to lie on their bellies at the side of the water to look at it.

Lots of children go in cars every day, few people have unfenced ponds in their garden so it's not a good comparison. Also nothing wrong with taking a group of supervised children to look at a pond but an unfenced pond in a nursery garden is an accident waiting to happen.