SecEd The ONLY weekly voice for secondary education Inside this issue


Assessment for Learning


Dr Joanna Goodman discusses the role and application of Assessment for Learning in the classroom Page 13


Teaching assistants


A five-year study has analysed how teaching assistants should be deployed in the classroom in order to get the biggest impact Page 6


Fears over changes to health and safety rules


by Dorothy Lepkowska


Staff and pupils are being put at risk of asbestos-related diseases because of government plans to make governors, instead of local authorities, responsible for health and safety issues in schools, it has been claimed. Members of a national asbestos


campaign are urging ministers to re- think plans to make governing bod- ies of all state-funded schools the ultimate employer, and so assuming full legal responsibilities for the health and wellbeing of employees and students. The Joint Union Asbestos


Committee (JUAC) believes a recent judgement against the University of Lincoln, which exposed staff to asbestos fibres, shows how easily things can go wrong if asbestos is not properly managed in educational institutions. The university was fined


The role of gaming


The recent book, Reality is Broken, discusses how education must change to reach a generation of video gamers. Teacher Kester Brewin offers a commentary Page 10


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£10,000 last November and ordered to pay costs of more than £12,000, after it had failed for several years to act upon its own asbestos manage- ment plan and evidence of the sub- stance was found on door handles in buildings around the campus. Julie Winn, the chair of JUAC,


said the incident underlined the importance of maintaining local authority responsibility, and its spe- cialist knowledge and resources to help schools manage their asbestos safely. Answering a Parliamentary


question last month, schools min- ister Nick Gibb said: “We are cur- rently considering the options for transferring employer health and safety duties to governing bodies. In practical terms it is the governing body that acts as the school staffs employer, even where in the major- ity of cases, the formal employment contract is with the local authority.” However, Ms Winn, a former


chair of governors, said: “Governors freely volunteer their time and expertise to support schools, but this is a step too far. It is hard to envisage how they will cope with this additional responsibility with the limited time and resources available to them. “Although more than 75 per


cent of all UK schools contain asbestos, currently there is not any specific school guidance for the management of asbestos or any spe- cific training on the management of asbestos in schools. The govern- ment has also recently scrapped the health and safety inspections of schools that ensured they were achieving safe standards “This is yet a further attempt to


deregulate without proper consider- ation of the practical impact on the risk to the health and safety of staff and pupils. The UK already has the


highest incidence of mesothelioma deaths in the world. We fear these changes will put more staff and pupils at risk of potentially deadly exposure to asbestos.” Michael Lees, founder of the


Asbestos in Schools group, whose wife, a teacher, died of mesothelio- ma, said: “Asbestos can kill unless it is effectively managed, there- fore the best local authorities have trained, dedicated officials so they can achieve the rigorous standards required. “This proposal will inevitably


put staff and pupils at risk. It will also impose an intolerable burden on governors, for if something does go wrong then instead of legal action being taken against the local authority, it will in future be taken against the governors.” The proposals follow a report published late in 2010 which


claimed most local authorities had effective systems in place to deal with asbestos. At the time the National Union of Teachers (NUT) said the Health and Safety Executive, which carried out the study, and the Department for Education, were demonstrating a “misplaced confidence” in the find- ings because the study was confined to schools built between 1945 and 1980, and only 42 local authorities were visited as part of the research. The rest were found to have com- pleted satisfactory responses to a questionnaire. The NUT called for a full inde-


pendent audit of all schools to find out how widespread the problem is. Plans to pass on responsibilities for asbestos management directly to schools have further angered the union. Christine Blower, the NUT’s


Issue 304 • January 12 2012 Price £1.00 www.sec-ed.com


general secretary, said: “These proposals will do nothing to pro- tect children and teachers from the threat of poorly managed asbestos in schools.” Meanwhile, Dr Mary Bousted,


general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the government was sacrificing the health and safety of children in favour of deregulation. “The safe management of asbes-


tos in our schools is too important to leave to chance, and is already too piecemeal and poorly managed in many schools,” she said. “Unless asbestos management


in schools improves, more pupils and school staff will be at risk and their lives will be potentially endan- gered. It is hard to see how transfer- ring the management of asbestos to school governors will bring about an improvement.”


Heads up: Not a sight you see everyday in the school playground, but the arrival of two converted buses at this Yorkshire school has enabled a new, if slightly unusual, qualification to be added to the curriculum. See page 2


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