Low fall in a school

Introduction

Teachers, support staff and maintenance staff in schools often have to work at raised levels.

Typical examples for teachers are:

• Reaching to place pupils' work on the walls in classrooms.
• Placing or removing stationery etc. stored at high level in storerooms.
• Putting up/taking down Christmas decorations.

Typical examples for maintenance staff are:

• Replacing light bulbs or maintaining and adjusting stage lighting.
• Window replacement, painting, decorating and cleaning, and other areas of building maintenance.
• Erecting and dismantling stage displays and backgrounds.

Accident description

A teacher needed to retrieve items of stationery from a top shelf in a store cupboard. No stepladder was available so she used a small table that was in the store. Once on the desk she found the items she needed were further along the shelf than she'd realised. As the desk had other papers and books on it, she didn't want to descend, remove the other items on the desk and re-position it. So she over-reached for the items from her existing position, lost her balance, fell and fractured a wrist. She was off work for two weeks.

Reducing risk of falls to teachers

Local authorities such as the Royal Borough of Kingston on Thames have pursued a number of initiatives to reduce the number of low falls accidents in schools:

• Eliminate the need for teachers to use tables and chairs by the provision of small portable stepladders and ‘elephants foot' type steps (see Figures 1 and 2). Ensure these are in each classroom where possible, so teachers are not tempted just to use what is to hand.
• Training on the safe use of working at height equipment, including simple pre-use checks.
• Risk assessment courses for Head and Deputy Head Teachers to ensure senior staff are aware of all areas of low fall risk in the school (areas such as storing at high levels in stationery cupboards can often be overlooked).
• Staff training to ensure they are aware of all the different methods of reducing the risk of working at heights that are available in the school.
• Consider using ‘washing line' type displays and using poles to open windows, thus avoiding the need to work at height.

• 
  Figure 1 - 'Elephants foot' type kick stool and small access platform.
• 
  Figure 2 - Underside of the above two devices showing the spring loaded wheels.

Business case

• The total cost of the accident including lost teaching time, investigation of the accident and insurance costs was approximately £3000.
• Sick leave from an incident can be anything from a few days to several months.
• As well as the anxiety, stress and disruption this causes other staff, children will be affected by such incidences - particularly if they witnessed it themselves.
• Time is required to investigate the incident and propose improvements.
• The cost of an elephant's foot or small stepladder is around £70-£100.