AIBU to think school are too risk happy with older kids in Forest School?

[LizzieLookAtTheFlowers]

10yo was taking part in organised forest school activity and broke her collarbone. Am all for inherent risk of adventurous play, this is not the issue - had she simply fallen, I wouldn't be here. But, the hammock she was in collapsed and she was tipped out backwards about 110-120cm and landed on exposed tree root causing a displaced clavicle fracture. 2 weeks off school, aside from that healing ok, will need physio as has reduced range of motion.

However, circumstances surrounding the incident concern me.

1. The hammock had also collapsed on the previous go - child thankfully not injured.
2. Teacher was not there, they got him, he re-rigged it and tugged it, told them not to swing then went back to campfire.
3. There were 2 adults to 14 kids overall, but across 2 stations quite far apart, so hammock area couldn't be seen or heard when he was at campfire with the TA and other kids.
4. The big exposed tree root is what broke her collarbone

On first occasion, kids were swinging friends in hammock quite vigorously which is what caused it to fall down. On second occasion, one girl didn't listen and swung my daughter in it, but as she was one small girl it wasn't crazy swinging and it collapsed more dramatically than before.

School have essentially said Y6 are old enough to get on with things themselves and don't need babysitting, they should have been able to trust them (presume this means they blame the girl who swung it but they haven't explicitly said this). they have lowered the hammock a bit to 86cm and that H&S assessor said the knots were fine. But didn't explain why then the hammock repeatedly collapsed if the knots are fine.

They didn't report to RIDDOR as said it wasn't related to a work activity even though it was in lesson time, the equipment failed, had previously failed and teacher decided to keep going with it and leave the kids unsupervised.

No adult witnessed her fall or was there to provide assistance - she had to get up and be helped over to the campfire quite a way away to tell an adult what had happened, and they couldn't even hear her crying.

I feel uneasy. I don't feel the school are learning lessons from this that Y6 kids are still kids. Surely if something changes and a risk becomes KNOWN rather than theoretical they need to change safety plans. I probably wouldn't have left them to it at that point, or would have taken the hammock out of action for the lesson until I could look into why it was falling repeatedly. But their investigation showed "no evidence of unsafe management" not even the hazards in the fall zone or the height or anything (despite them making some changes).

It's not the first time. In last 12 months I know of 4 other kids hospitalised due to forest school. One of them I know the school were really defensive and blasé about. Despite their risk assessment stating "no running", they organised a manhunt activity which resulted in a boy running full pelt into suspended ropes and rebounding off them with his face/neck. He got severe facial/eye rope burns that scarred, whiplash and concussion. They said no safety issues found.

I just... I'm uneasy. I know accidents happen, and these kids will be fine, but both of those incidents plus the other two could have been so much worse and there's just a pattern of ignoring risk assessments and generally saying "oh well the whole point of Forest School is they get a bit roughed up and they're almost at secondary school!" It's always Year 6 that get hurt!

Am I oversensitive? Or should the school be a bit less risky happy?

I'm unclear what you want - sorry

The responses on this thread are insane!! There is a clear risk assessment for good reason, it was not followed and injury resulted. If the hammock had been away from hard objects and within sight of the teacher the injury would not have resulted.

It is absolutely BASIC to expect the school to adhere to their own risk assessment.

OP you're correct to keep harping on this one - they need to acknowledge that their risk assessments are relevant and important.

I'm not asking for them to remove all risk and don't understand why people don't understand what risk management actually is.

Maybe I just have more knowledge of H&S than most because of my background.

HSE says striking the balance means not eliminating all risk just eliminating risk that is not necessary for the activity nor beneficial to the child. Hammock = risks of entrapment, strangulation and falls but beneficial for balance, coordination and individual risk taking. Unecessary, controllable risks that don't have any benefit = leaving them out of sight and sound, uncontrolled hazardous fall zone, non-recommended slippery attachments and leaving kids unsupervised after the attachments failed. I hope you see the distinction.

I have tried to explain that even in my garden when I constructed play equipment I did so in an area where kids wouldnt land on anything hard like rocks or sharp concrete edges if they fell. That is common sense and we ALL do that - because what is the point of introducing a risk to a situation that increases the chances of your kid being catastrophically injured?

It is common sense and that is ALL I am asking for them to recognise. Normal, common sense things we do every day to prevent unecessary shit happening. It's not too much to ask and it is their legal responsibility as well. They can't just refuse to acknowledge it - even though they are. It is literally the law for schools to clear fall zones - why are we arguing its acceptable not to?

The lack of comprehension on this, and many other, thread(s) is really worrying.
OP is saying the school DID NOT FOLLOW THEIR OWN RISK ASSESSMENT and would like the school to FOLLOW THEIR OWN RISK ASSESSMENT in future whilst also expressing to OP that they were lacking, in this case, and will do better. She has not said she thinks children shouldn’t take risks. Not once. She wants the adults to follow their own risk assessment.
OP I agree with you. This accident wouldn’t have happened if the school had followed their own risk assessment. They need to do better because they are, and will be, accountable if something more serious happens. Risk assessments need to be followed and referred back to.

I want them to stop bullshitting that everything was perfectly perfect and accept that not following your own risk assessment is bad practice. Because they have repeatedly done so and kids have been injured.

I would like their reassurance that they have learned something about how to manage risks and the consequences of not doing so, so I can be confident that kids won't be put in unecessary danger.

That is something we should all take for granted when sending our kids to school, isn't it? But they have repeatedly demonstrated they cannot be relied on to do it. They need to sort themselves out and I don't want to be a dick and report them or sue them; I'd just like them to be transparent and have an honest human conversation rather than wade through their predictable bureaucratic drivel.

I don't know if i just went to a particularly accident prone school. But I remember pretty much every sports day some kid would break a bone/sustain a cut requiring stitches. Plenty of accidents throughout the school year. My friend sustained an open fracture tripping up some steps. Lots of kids are clumsy and multiple A&E visits a year wasn't unusual for them.

The school appear to be writing risk assessments so that they can say they have a risk assessment. That is not the purpose of risk assessments.

My dh has to write loads as a teacher and youth leader - he was advised by an older colleague to "think about what you would say at the inquest" and work back so that the inquest doesn't need to happen.

Risk assessments are written on the backs of dead/seriously injured people and self assessment that "we did everything properly" when you ignored your own risk assessment won't cut it if it all goes tits up.

Don't ever trust this school with anything to do with water activities.

Hm I started reading this being quite sympathetic to school but by the end I do agree you are right to be unnerved. I actually moved one of my kids to a new school after a series of pretty inexcusable safeguarding incidents and him ending up very very severely injured (won't go into details but more so than your daughter). The red flags I shouldn't have ignored first time were what you called out - blasé attitude and defensiveness. The only appropriate response is we are sorry, we are investigating, this is what happened, these are the steps we are taking to make sure this doesn't happen again. Not 'not our fault, nothing to see here'

But you won't get that from them. No-one is going to admit liability unless forced to do so.

If you don't trust them, withdraw your child from either just the forest school or the school as a whole.

Kids, teens, even adults regularly lie to get out of trouble. That doesn't mean they aren't also old enough to make sensible decisions or take part in activities that require problem solving and risk assessment.

This needs following up.
Complaint to the school, follow their complaint policy and escalate as needed.
Ignoring their own Risk Assessment is very serious - it's a criminal offence and the teacher can be held personally liable.
Report to HSE if the school will not take it seriously.
FWIW, we have hammocks at home that are forever being swung in by the children and they have never collapsed!

I think OP is just one of "those" parents. I mean googling the relative merits of natural vs man made rope, required depth of leaf litter, blah, blah, blah and hassling school about it. When it was simply DD arsing around on a hammock and falling. Unfortunate yes but not that big of a deal. Imagine the amount of time school are having to spend responding to all that. Either do forest school or don't.

We get it loads with DS's rugby club. A small minority of parents who want their kids to play but don't like the physicality and risk of injury. So become an all round pain in the arse until they can be eased out.

There is such a big difference though. Of course not every fall is someone's fault. The point is there's a world of difference between someone randomly tripping over their own feet and a kid falling because they were allowed/encouraged to use equipment that was known to be unsafe.

Totally different clearly, but there was a girl that died because they didn't attach her bungee rope and threw her off a bridge recently. Yes, bungee jumping has risks. But was it her fault for reasonably assuming they would actually check the rope was attached before chucking her off? Would she had died if they had done what they were supposed to do?

When something happens that could have been easily prevented, it's reasonable to ask why it was not prevented and whether this attitude puts people at unecessary risk. That's where I'm coming from.

If she'd landed on her head or spine it could have been much worse

I think this is the crux of it. The accident has put the fear of God into you, quite understandably. DS had a neck injury playing for the school football team. Once the drama was over (blue lighted to a specialist hospital) and he was ok, my mind was filled with "what if's". In fact even many years later my stomach turns over at what might have happened.

Wow the smugness must just ooze out of you

The school should have followed their own risk assessment, it is right to raise that with them, but also the children shouldn't have been swinging the hammock and some of the responsibility does lie with them (if your DD genuinely did not ask to be swung then she doesn't bear any responsibility herself of course). Children this age ought to be responsible enough to be unsupervised in a forest - at that age my DD was being dropped off by Scout leaders in the middle of a forest with two other children and a map and a compass and expected to find their way to the camp 8km away unsupervised in a forest with all its inherent risks.

Do agree that year 6 should be allowed to be more independent however not reporting to RIDDOR is appalling. The tree root is incidental. The lack of supervision and multiple accidents is worrying.

Hope your daughter heals well and her summer isn't compromised. That's a nasty injury.

Well maybe schools leave parents no choice but to report and/or sue them then? But that's nonsense. I have 3 kids in 3 different schools and only this school is like that. With everything.

I also guess you have never lived anywhere with oversubscribed schools. She leaves the school on Tuesday, but I have a younger child in the attached infant school who is moving up. What do I do with her while she's on a waiting list for another school place?

Also, is "like it or leave" really the answer for schools? They are state-funded, legally accountable service providers with huge responsibilities - it isn't the local softplay we can just choose not to frequent.

Yeah and I think that's where your instinct is right.

Accidents absolutely do happen. But when they happen and the school doesn't have any curiosity as to how they could have done things differently or better, what they'd do in a similar scenario next time, when they start being cagey and withholding information or not engaging and being defensive... THAT'S the red flag.

All I'll say is I saw the same behaviour from my son's old school, lots of accidents, lots of parents complaining, lots of explaining away, lots of 'oh it was one off and isolated'. Eventually led to my kid in intensive care nearly dead from an utterly preventable accident that never would have happened if they'd learned lessons from previous accidents, and me never forgiving myself that I didn't trust my instincts earlier and escalate to the governors that their defensiveness and lack of ability to learn from mistakes was endangering the kids.

I'd escalate to governors or OFSTED. They should report things like this as part of their inspection though I found out after my son's accident they often don't. I whistleblew on my son's accident months later and found out his school had never told them.

If your kid needs to stay there (totally understandable) you do need to be part of trying to fix the problem. And I'm with the 50% that agrees there is a problem here and the problem will be coming from senior leadership. I'd engage governors and OFSTED. Not doing adequate risk updates after an accident so serious is definitely something OFSTED would be interested to hear about.

God I am so sorry. This is my fear. When I helped my friend with her complaint months ago, i thought "they aren't interested in improving just so they don't appear at fault" and that is dangerous. I said to her that this attitude would cause more accidents one one might end up being really serious or fatal.

Then I learned about other kids being badly hurt and thought "how preventable were they?"

Then this happened and I thought bloody hell I didn't think I'd be right and it would be my own child. And what if it's more serious next time? It easily could be.

I'm not pushing this because I want to be an arsehole and make issues. It's irrelevant, but for context I'm actually really not well and waiting for neurosurgery and (literally) don't have the headspace to deal with it. I'm pushing it because I care about kids, understand the nuance clearly and I can see there are actually systemic issues that need to stop. I don't want to do nothing, then hear a kid is in intensive care with a head injury, or will never walk again, or has died. And know I could have done something.

It's not just about my kids. Though clearly I do have a younger child to protect as well.

I will take what you have said and make sure I don't just drop it because they're being difficult. Thank you. I'm going to report to HSE and progress the complaint to governors.

And I will leave it there because your perspective is so powerful I actually don't see how what anyone else has to say could possibly matter. Sending love and hope your child is ok now.

This. The climbing frame in my garden is much higher.

It sounds like these children were really badly behaved for their age, with an astonishing lack of common sense & that was a key factor in the incident. I'd be more concerned about what was being done as a consequence for the disobedience than for the level of inherent risk in the activity.

Sounds like a RIDDOR Regulation 5 jobbie....

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/1471/regulation/5/made

I am shocked to hear staff at this forest school are taking risks without thinking through possible dangers. You can’t eliminate them all - but leaving ropes up while kids are running?? Sounds like the forest school lead couldn’t leave the fire to supervise the hammock area - and pre-knotted ropes with carabiners would have been much safer than a hand-tied rope which clearly comes loose. They could have done a dynamic risk assessment due to insufficient staffing and put the fire out/removed the hammock. The forest school rules would hopefully have been shared at the start of the session but the students clearly needed support to remember them and use equipment appropriately. A hammock is a safe space for one person. I have no idea why the posts were put up by the tree root, unless it’s come up over time. But this is why you walk the area/make daily checks. I would definitely escalate this and they should thank you for the opportunity to look at things with fresh eyes. If the school needs volunteers to help support sessions, great. It must have been horrible for your daughter - hope it doesn’t put her off long term X