MPs and peers gathered yesterday to discuss what can be done to better prepare young people for the workplace, at an event hosted by the Occupational Safety and Health All-Party Parliamentary Group and IOSH.
In the last ten years, 64 people under the age of 19 have been killed, and more than 15,000 seriously injured, in work-related accidents. The seminar in the House of Commons gave IOSH the opportunity to raise awareness of its campaign, ‘Putting young workers first’, which is based on an action plan aimed at improving the protection of young people in the workplace.
The action plan includes the following six points:
€ﾢ Teacher training to include a module on how to teach health and safety to students;
€ﾢ Teaching health and safety in the classroom to be mandatory on the school curriculum;
€ﾢ Work placements to be vetted by competent staff, and ensure that everyone carrying out such a role is trained to a national occupational standard;
€ﾢ Improved supervision, by introducing an improved code of practice on supervising young and inexperienced workers;
€ﾢ Tighter reporting requirements for learners in colleges and schools; and
€ﾢ The Government to make health and safety a priority when setting its strategic priorities for education, training and skills.
As part of the campaign, IOSH, in partnership with the HSE, has developed the Workplace Hazard Awareness Course (WHAC) for year-10 pupils. About 2000 organisations have already registered to deliver the training, while 93 MPs have signed up to an Early Day Motion (EDM) that calls on the Government to make WHAC a mandatory part of the curriculum.
Chair of the OSH All-Party Parliamentary Group, Michael Clapham MP, who sponsored the EDM, said: “Young people, through their lack of life experience and health and safety training, are particularly vulnerable. Protecting the vulnerable is an essential mark of a civilised society and IOSH’s proposed measures are a practical solution, which I strongly support.”
Andrew Selous, the Conservatives’ Shadow Work and Pensions minister, was broadly supportive of the plan, but emphasised the need to be practical. On making health and safety teaching mandatory, he said: “The challenge I always put to those who want to add something to the National Curriculum is to tell me what you’re going to take out. Our campaign is already pretty full. . . We have to be practical without overloading pupils and teachers.”
Responding to Selous’ comments, the Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Work and Pensions minister and former teacher, Paul Rowen, suggested that health and safety would be taught more in schools, partly as a result of moves to encourage teachers to undertake more outdoor excursions.
“If young people are to cope with risk, they have to experience it, and they have to experience it in a controlled environment. . . It [teaching on health and safety] will find a space in the curriculum because it will reinforce, and will be able to fit alongside, what is already happening.”
On the issue of work-placement officers, Selous supported IOSH’s call to ensure they had the appropriate health and safety knowledge and training, but stressed the need for a measured approach so that young people were not unfairly prevented from spending time with good employers.
But Terry Rooney MP, chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, took a harder line, saying: “There is a need for there to be an obligation on work-placement officers to have an understanding of health and safety legislation, and an awareness that wherever they are sending children is a safe place to work.”
