To refuse to teach this lesson

[cantthinkofausername26]

Secondary teacher of a practical subject. Maximum amount of students doing practical at one time has always been 16. Suddenly this term it has increased to 25! Boys school so big kids, year 10.
Head of department has decided this particular practical should be taught. I feel it is dangerous. Multiple hazards, too many kids, accident waiting to happen,
AIBU to say I'm not doing it. WHEN an accident happens I will be held accountable as class teacher.

If you feel you do have to do it, and you cannot double
up students, could you adapt the recipe in anyway? What are the 3 pans for? Potatoes, chicken, dish, veg side...could you make the veg side an oven roasted one instead (roasted brocoli). Or new potatoes in the oven (not par-boiled or peeled, just oil).

Think about it as if it were you cooking it at home but half your hob was broken and your saucepan handles had fallen off. What could you shift to the grill/oven.

Would that help?

And like PP....document. put it in an email to your HOD. 100% have evidence...but if you have some solutions (even if not great) you then have something to get it in writing.

"Further to our discussion on Friday, I would still like to express my uncertainty over the safety of the whole of 10AbY completing the chicken roast practical at the same time. Whilst I appreciate the demands of the food room, as mentioned the issues of XYZ are hazards.
Having reviewed the practical I could do 123. This does mitigate "X" hazard. Obviously "Y and "Z" are still concerns. "

This covers you arse on this...which I think will be important...and may prod your HOD into rethinking.

That's not how it works in Science or DT at secondary, we have model risk assessments done for each item of equipment or activity, produced either by CLEAPPS or DATA - we then refer to these as and when needed if a particular process is being used.

We don't risk assess per lesson, but rather per process - they are very detailed, and in DT are gone through with the pupils when they are signed off on using a particular item and posted on a notice board adjacent to that process area.

By year 10/11/12/13, when all pupils will be making something different as their GCSE / A Level project piece activity of each pupil will be entirely different - they will write their own RA as part of their project.

If she won't budge take it to your union and HoY/Deputy?

ThatCalmHelper · Today 09:04

The risk assessment is probably a generic for the activity, most schools use CLEAPPS risk assessments, so probably of little value, except identifying the most likely point of trouble.

In my industry, for a significant change in operations we'd have a toolbox talk and a new risk assessment, then a request for MOC (management of change). This is all official and must be registered on the HSE database. Apart from a new risk assessment, does any of that apply to you?

I'd speak to the union rep and have them as a witness. Fill in your own risk assessment, including a Risk Matrix, scan it and email it to the appropriate person

I agree, in this point the OP should do her own, use CLEAPSS as a reference and do a matrix specific to the group and area she is working in.

Submit it with a concern, to the HOD and the H&S officer, then if she is forced to run the lesson and an accident happens their is a clear record of her raising the issue and the concern.

The problem with the food tech kitchen is that, in my mind it carries higher real terms risk than say my DT welding bay, purely because the pupils are so familiar with all the kitchen kit, have likely used knives and boiling pans at home, and fallen into all manner of bad habits and view the items as non hazardous.

Actually in science even though we have model risk assessment for equipment use and core practicals. Teachers are still supposed to risk asses each individual practical (I would have thought this would apply to DT as well) as you cannot assess in advance for the different students in each group or possible changes made to a pracitical due to say missing a peace of a equipment of substituting something else in instead.

Teachers are quite bad at doing it but CLEAPSS does say that EVERY individual practical should be risk assessed by the teacher 🙄. A record of this should be made as well, this is in case something goes wrong. It doesn't need to be a big document just a few lines showing you have taken say, John in 10P3 who has a tenancy to not pay attention to instructions into consideration when planning your practical. Or any children with additional needs.

Why can't the OP do it in two lessons, like she suggested to the HOD? What reason was given for refusing this?

Yes, we would tend to have something on the lesson plan (if there is one 😉)if there was a specific pupil of concern - each pupil also has a "passport" which confirms they have had training on a particular item.

At year 10 we get a chap to come in, who does our teacher training on machines and do the same course they do with us with the year 10's on the equipment they can use independently - as they will eventually all be doing their own thing for many weeks on end.

I'm going to assume timetabling, she has them all in a block?

But if half the class did the practical one lesson, and the others did written tasks, then they could swap the following lesson/week.

I agree that makes sense, but our food tech kitchens don't have spaces / desks for written work, if OP has the similar layout she would need another room and a TA/Cover to keep an eye on the other half.

Ah I see. I was assuming she had the necessary space since she made the proposal to her HOD.

If the cooking room space is designed for 16 people max, then contact the fire department about what you're being asked to do. There is probably a 'maximum' room capacity and you may be past it.

I was at school when the girls did cookery and the boys did woodwork. As it was only half the class there were only 15 cooking in a large room. However, I don’t ever remember a time when I had 3 pans on the go at the same time and really question this. Surely part of the lesson should be about economising on electricity and only having 1 pan of boiling water.

Maybe they could work as pairs with double quantity in each pan?

I can't do that unfortunately as it's for an assessment

I do have the space, HOD just won't allow it

No particular reason, she just "doesn't want the class split"

Ask for the risk assessment update and call your union asap. If you have a health & safety concern REPORT.

Thanks for your comments. I am a very experienced teacher. If there was another way around this eg recipe alterations, working in pairs etc I would have done it. I don't need help with planning my lesson. I need to know if it is unreasonable of me to say I'm not doing this lesson as I don't think it's safe.

Suggest your HOD teaches it and you swap with his/her class for that lesson.

Yanbu. I'm not a teacher op but I am a parent of a 13yr old boy and I would be really unhappy with this set-up. Knowing an experienced class teacher had flagged safety concerns and being told to forge ahead anyway with no mitigations, is shocking.

I'd much rather you split the lesson and do half and half and it took longer than put kids at risk of injury. It's also an incredibly stressful situation for you to be put in even if nothing goes wrong.

I'm in Scotland and it's not allowed here to have more than 20 pupils in a practical lesson. This is clearly set out contractually.

Speaking as a DT HOD, who does have Food Tech within my remit, but I let them have autonomy, as I only do pot noodles badly!! I don't think you are being unreasonable at all to raise this and object.

Worse still, you say you have space to split and your HOD won't split the class - I'll stick my neck out and say she is negligent from a H&S standpoint as she is ignoring a solution to an obvious problem just because "se doesn't want to do that".

I've always been a bit of a firebrand so would be saying something like " well you teach the lesson then!!" but appreciate that probably won't go down well!

Direct answer, not unreasonable at all!

Off topic. I don't mean this in a smart Alec way, but it's 'number' of students - not amount of students. 'Students' is a countable noun. Amount is for uncountable nouns-water, cheese, happiness.

No, YANBU. I think you should take the action you feel is appropriate and mitigates risks.

The eyebrow-raising point for me is up until now the maximum number doing practicals at one time was 16 but it’s now suddenly 25. What’s driven that change? I hope they’ve got records of why that change has been decided with appropriate revised risk assessments as others have noted.

I know schools can be buggers for pushing the limits when it comes to how they treat staff but I’d love to see how they could get out of a situation where if you were to split the class in 2, as you suggested and for the reasons you have, they gave you a hard time for doing so. A union should be all over a case like that.