What

Accidents and incidents will, of course, happen regularly in all school environments. We use the two terms somewhat interchangeably, but essentially they can be defined as follows:

• An accident is an event that has unintentionally happened, that results in damage, injury or harm. 

• An incident is an event that has unintentionally happened, but this may not result in damage, harm or injury (so would include near misses).

We record these in a variety of ways.

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Why

As an organisation, we have certain legal obligations for recording and reporting accidents and incidents. Beyond that, it is very important that we are able to inform our parents about accidents that have happened involving their children, and to analyse trends to enable us to continuously improve health and safety in our schools.

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How

For more detailed information about exactly how we respond to accidents and incidents within ACE schools, please refer to the ACE Health and Safety Manual. However, in summary, we follow the below procedure:
We use an online accident reporting tool known as OSHENS, for:

• Accidents, near misses, work related ill health or work-related violence (either verbal or physical) to employees.

• Accidents to non-employees (pupils, contractors or members of the public) that occur out of or in connection with work. i.e. supervision, during a curriculum activity, due to the condition of equipment or premises or as a result of a traffic accident whilst on a work activity.

For incidents resulting in a trivial injury, such as a graze, bump or red mark we use an online ‘bump book’ instead of OSHENS. The ‘bump book’ is operated through our MIS system, Bromcom.

 

All incidents will be investigated. However, the level of investigation will be commensurate with the scale of the incident and injuries sustained.  

 

Trend analyses of all occurring incidents are carried out at a school level and at a Trust level.

 

In this section:

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