Teacher fire training

[Yeebsy]

Hi guys, I'm the health and safety governor at our local first school. I have just completed an on-line fire risk assessment with 'firesmart4schools'. It picked up that none of the teachers were trained in the use of FAFAs. Does anyone here know the law on this? do all staff have to be trained and if so who carries out the training. I have been a fire fighter (RAF now airport) for 18 years so would I be able to do it? or do I have to get a registered company in.

Tanks for your time and I look forward to your replays.

Regards

Yeebsy.

[davio1960]

Hi Yeebsy and welcome
Many of the people who will answer your questions are extremely knowledgeable and specialise in your field.

From my own understanding the fire safety order does apply to your school.
You are right to identify the requirement of written fire risk assessment.

As part of the legislative requirements the responsible person....in a school this is often the head teacher, have a duty to ensure employees are adequately trained.
Not all staff would receive the same training because some staff will have supervisory duties and others will have managament duties...some-one needs to call 999, best to do this away from the alarm panal as fire alarm engineers have this cheeky little habit of placing a very loud fire alarm bell/siren very close to the panel often fire control operators then have difficulty hearing the message of help my buildings burning down!

Once away from the danger zone  someone should co-ordinate the roll call in out of hours the supervisor can check off those present from night classes.

At some time time, usually within 8 minutes, the local fire station will turn up and the firefighter in charge will have a few questions
1)Is Every one out
2)Where is the fire alarm annunciator panel
3)Whats involved
4)Have you trained staff inside with fire fighting media
5)Where is the premises services, electrical and gas intake
6)In some schools they use acetylene and other flammable gases the fire crews may have previous information about these and may want additional information

So Yeebsy you now have a few areas to consider. With your experience I should imagine you can cover most areas of the training yourself. The responsible person should be able to demonstrate who has been trained. This is often in the form of a staff training record.
The fire risk assessment maybe a slightly more difficult nut to crack and you may require assistance due to the various requirements of the educational world and protecting our darling children.
Some fire authorities have an understanding, a partnership, with the local fire authority who may have a sitting fire officer in the council to assist you directly.
Nearly all councils have a specific type of fire risk assessment to complete that is part of the overall fire strategy document as issued by the local educational department. What you have previously completed may satisfy legislative requirements but not the local educational department!

The important question has been asked...the first.
Good luck. I'm sure others will add a wealth of extremely useful info. Your choice is what to use?

Regards David1960

[kurnal]

Hi Yeebsy

Theres little needs to be added to Davio1960's excellent answer.

Just take a look at the Governments guidance document - especially pages 108- 113.

In a first school things do not need to be be too complicated as these are usually fairly small premises. You can download the document here:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/fire/pdf/150865

The fire risk assessment is the first step, then formulate your emergency plan, then train the staff to implement the plan and  their  role within it. The fire extinguisher training will be very secondary to ensuring the safety of the children. With your experience there is no reason why you should not be competent to carry out this training yourself based on the equipment you have on site.

[AnthonyB]

If you are going to look at extinguisher training, which as stated is far down the line of things, then rather than give it to everyone unnecessarily concentrate on the parts of the school where there is a realistic risk of a fire that would (a) occur during school hours & (b) be appropriate for a first aid attack. I'd put it at a lower priority as most school fires are out of hours arson.

From experience the science staff, particularly chemistry staff are the most important so they can correctly use their labs fire blankets and the CO2 extinguishers without blasting the glassware across the room, and the sand buckets. After that Craft, Design, Technology staff and the school's kitchen staff are equally deserving of the training.

In theory as long as you are competent you should be able to do the theory training, although the local education authority may get the health & safety/insurance jitters if you try the practical in house, which companies like mine can provide, however you will find that the local fire and rescue service will provide high quality training at a very reasonable rate via their commercial training department.

[Yeebsy]

Cheers for the rapid response guys. Most helpful, thanks. The head teacher became a bit twitchy when another head in the county was served with an improvement notice, county then directed us to the online assessment saying that they were the bis, we passed the assessment but it flagged up about teacher training. We are lucky being a first school as it's only 4-6 year old and no chemistry classes or workshops. Obviously I can't go setting bins alight and ask the teachers to extinguish them but I can make a start with some PowerPoint pressies.

Once again guys, thank you.

Yeebsy

[kurnal]

Hi Yeebsy
I wouldnt mind taking a look at the firesmart4schools assessment system but cant find them by googling- to be honest my reason is to see how they approach issues such as benchmarking and the poor standards of buildings, remembering that so many  of out schools in the UK  were thrown up on the cheap in the 50s, 60s and 70s when to save money  the Governments of the day made them exempt from building regulations.

Many of the larger comprehensives  are shocking designs with large and complex interconnected voids, no fire stopping, fire resisting partitions that stop at false ceiling level, lack of fire separation to escape routes, inappropriate wall finishes and to cap it all a proper risk assessment is difficult because they are chock full of asbestos.  

I would be very interested to see how an on line fire risk assessment system copes with these issues. Is there a website I could take a look at?

[Deadendburied]

Google dosn't find it, but if you type www.firesmart4schools.co.uk into your browsers address bar it will take you straight to it!

[kurnal]

Oh dear. So smart they do not appear to have heard of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

Users need to be aware that there has been a very significant change  in the legislation since that web site (and presumanbly the risk assessment)  was designed.

Thanks for the link though. Crikey its time I reviewed our fee structure!

Yeebsy- If your County are recommending this to schools please ask them first to confirm whether its a good idea by taking free and impartial  advice from their local fire and rescue service.

[Deadendburied]

Like many online or tick box forms, which claim to be a Fire Risk Assessment, it seems to start from the point of view that the building is fine, and it is just a matter of managing the existing.

As has already been said, with many schools, this is not the case.  After many years falling outside the legislative control of the Fire Service, where at best, Education Authorities were given a pile of "goodwill advice", for consideration and prioritizing, there is often a lot of work to be done achieve a reasonable standard.
I've seen no form based approach to Risk Assessment that incorporates professional judgment needed to benchmark etc etc.

That said, I do believe it is possible, using the guidance available, for a layperson to complete a suitable and sufficient risk assessment using a good template.  Many Fire Services have very good ones on their websites.  The more complex a building gets, the more difficult and time consuming the exercise becomes, at which point a judgment needs to be made between how much the laypersons time is costing, compared to enlisting professional assistance.

In terms of local authority schools addressing the issue of risk assessment on an individual basis, I believe this is a cop out by the Education Authority.  The Responsible Person is the Director of Education (or equivalent).  One Enforcement Notice served on a Director of Education has more effect than one served on every head teacher in the authority.

[kurnal]

I like your recommendation over holding the Director of education up as the responsible person but am afraid it is not so clear cut in many cases.

A number of schools have been designated "Foundation Schools" and my understanding is that in these cases that legally the Headteacher and governors are the Employer, and whilst they are totally responsible for managing their budget, the size of this is set by the Education Authority.

I have carried out a detailed assessment in one such school in the last couple of weeks and my detailed schedule of fire related hazards and action plan amounts to 80 pages, with serious problems in all areas of the report.

This in a school with leaking roofs, poorly designed sewers needing excavation, serious rot to much of the structural timber, corroded gas installations needing replacement and absolutely full of asbestos. Like all CLASP buildings the HSE are purging for the effective sealing of all cracks and cavities against the asbestos problems. Because its a foundation school they have to battle for funding against other schools that are higher up the pecking order being under direct control of the Authority.

The head teacher can never address more than the most serious crisis issues and at the moment gas leaks and blocked drains figure higher even than assbestos and fire. I wouldn't like to swap places with him.

[Deadendburied]

In the case of Foundation  Schools, although the Head and Governors and considered the legal employers, if they only manager, rather than determine the size of their budget, there must I believe, be at least a joint responsibility with the budget setters.
I would still advocate serving a notice on the Director of Education and let the courts decide should they appeal.

[Yeebsy]

Cheers Kurnel, I didn't get a chance to speak to the Head before she went and purchased this service, I was a bit miffed as I, off my own back had got a Stn/O (sorry Stn Mgr) from the local brigade FP to come up to the school for a look around as I had a couple of concerns, anyway he gave us the all clear and as far as I was concerned that was enough. Anyway even after that the head still wanted more and seeing as my FP knowledge is ziltch I went along with it. Cheers for all the replays.

[Ken Taylor]

Regarding fire training for staff, in addition to a brief introduction to the subject and local arrangements in induction training, booking a training session for key staff by a competent person and providing relevant leaflets to all staff, how about getting this included on an inset type day - perhaps along with some other health and safety issues?

[Martin]

I have copied in some parts I have seen from school's fire risk assessments I would be intrerested in any comments.

"Employers have for a number of years had a legal duty to undertake fire risk assessments of their activities. The latest legislation is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.  This order continues the requirement on employers to make fire risk assessments. The 2005 order merely moved the requirement for fire risk assessments from an older piece of law to the new Fire Safety Order."

"In voluntary-aided and foundation schools the School Governing Body is the employer. This assessment should therefore be formally presented at a Governors meeting as evidence that the legally required assessment has been completed. The assessment will need to be reviewed at intervals. Advice on reviewing the assessment is given at the end of this document."


"At the time of the assessment there was no training in fire fighting or use of fire extinguishers.  Fire fighting is needed if there is a risk such that people could not safely evacuate the building without fire fighting.  In a school environment it is unlikely that a fire would be so large or fast spreading as to require fighting before a safe evacuation could be completed.  Nevertheless it would be prudent to have some staff training in fire fighting to deal with a very limited fire before it has time to spread."

I would support this in aprimary school were virtully every member of staff has a child care role in the evacuation.

For a secondary school reference would be made to "Cleapps". All LEAs are meeber of Cleapps who provide authoritive guidance on science and technolgy includiong storage and use of flammables in the curriculum and information on labs, and  workshops layouts. Thsi includes central gas cut offs etc for teacher use. Some comments on fire fighting amy miss the provision of a sand bucket ot isolate every sanll pool of flammable liquid. However the risk assessment might merley note Cleapps guidance was used in schemes of work and lesson plans.

As far as the responsible person goes it is the employer. The employer in a community school is the local education authority and in a foundation or voluntary-aided school (usually a church school) it is the governors collectively. The director of education or a headteacher are managers and employees. They are not the employers. A teachers contract of employment is with the lea or governors.

An lea has no control over th budget of a foundation school.  If the school really  does perform badly and is failing lthe LEA can apply to the Sec. of State to bring the school back under LEA control. THe Lea has no control over a foundation school.

The RRO is criminal legisaltion and strict liability applies. A notice issued on Director of Education as Resonsible Person would fail. A notice specifying a personal failure of the director as amanger would succeed.

[kurnal]

I have copied in some parts I have seen from school's fire risk assessments I would be intrerested in any comments.

"Employers have for a number of years had a legal duty to undertake fire risk assessments of their activities. The latest legislation is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.  This order continues the requirement on employers to make fire risk assessments. The 2005 order merely moved the requirement for fire risk assessments from an older piece of law to the new Fire Safety Order."

We know the changes went far more deeply than this of course bringing in the concept of responsible and relevant persons instead of employer and employees which becomes particularly significant in respect of extra curricular and community activities in the school premises.

"In voluntary-aided and foundation schools the School Governing Body is the employer. This assessment should therefore be formally presented at a Governors meeting as evidence that the legally required assessment has been completed. The assessment will need to be reviewed at intervals. Advice on reviewing the assessment is given at the end of this document."

Of course here it is the governors who are the responsible person and therefore they will be responsible for carrying out the risk assessment rather than satisfying themselves it has been carried out.

"At the time of the assessment there was no training in fire fighting or use of fire extinguishers.  Fire fighting is needed if there is a risk such that people could not safely evacuate the building without fire fighting.  In a school environment it is unlikely that a fire would be so large or fast spreading as to require fighting before a safe evacuation could be completed.  Nevertheless it would be prudent to have some staff training in fire fighting to deal with a very limited fire before it has time to spread."

An outdated concept of the role of first aid fire fighting equipment to support the evacuation and use of the means of escape rather than the now approach of preventing a small low risk fire becoming a large fire and a risk to everyone and the environment


I am interested in your statement that the LEA has no control of the budget of a foundation school. Does the foundation school not receive its funding through the LEA? I thought it did and that the LEA ultimately held the purse strings- if my foundation school needs money for asbestos, sewers and fire safety measures do they not have to approach the LEA and plead for additional capital?

I am also interested in you comment over the role of the governors and the head teacher of the foundatiobn schools- my information came from a head teacher but I would be happy to listen to anyone who was able to offer definitive guidance on this.