Legal issues, Ethics & Responsibilities

In this blog post, I will be reflecting on a specific legal issue addressed on the Department of Education, NSW’s Legal Issues Bulletins page. This will be done in response to considering what I need to do as a teacher to comply with the following AITSL Standards as a graduate teacher:

Focus area 7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities: - Understand and apply the key principles described in codes of ethics and conduct for the teaching profession.

Focus area 7.2 Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements: - Understand the relevant legislative, administrative and organisational policies and processes required for teachers according to school stage.

I have opted  to use the following issue for my reflection: Bulletin 19 - Liability and rights of staff in relation to serious incidents which involve potential risk of injury to persons on departmental premises - https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-accountability/legal-issues-bulletins/bulletin-19-liability-and-rights-of-staff-in-relation-to-serious-incidents-which-involve-potential-risk-of-injury-to-persons-on-departmental-premises

There are various things that need to be considered when it comes risk of injury on school premises.

However, as a teacher, the number one concern here is duty of care.

So what is meant by a teacher’s duty of care to their students?

Duty of care not only includes a teacher’s need to make certain to monitor student behaviour both in class and elsewhere on school grounds whenever they are in the teacher’s care. It also means needing to be proactive in assessing all potential hazards and other risks to student wellbeing.

A teacher’s duty of care refers to their legal obligation to make certain they do everything possible to provide reasonable care  for their students to make certain they are not at risk of harm when it comes to assessing any foreseeable risks. In other words, teachers need to make sure they are not negligent in their duty of care to their students. In the case of potential risk of injury, this refers then to a teacher’s need to assess potential foreseeable risks to students.

In the classroom, we can start with simple things to reduce risk of injury, such as to make classroom layout is suitable for safe movement around the room and there are no physical hazards that could potentially cause harm and injury. Then, when it comes to use of potentially dangerous equipment in class which can include everything from use of scissors through to using a bandsaw in a woodworking room, it is why we need to make sure to not only teach safe and responsible use of equipment but also need to make certain to carefully monitor equipment use so that we can correct unsafe behaviour before it becomes dangerous.

When a student is injured on school grounds whilst in the care of the teacher, if the teacher has been found to be negligent in any way then this becomes a matter of liability. The matter would need to be assessed to make certain that the teacher was not breaching their duty of care to their students. Unless the teacher has been “acting with serious and wilful misconduct”, breaches in duty of care fall under the category of vicarious liability. In this case, this issue is seen more as the legal responsibility of the school as opposed to the individual teacher. However, from a legal perspective, a teacher’s responsibility as a professional educator and means that they have an obligation to provide the best possible duty of care as an employee of the school. Therefore, even if the teacher is not directly deemed to be legally responsible it is then up to the school as to how they choose to handle such matters when it comes to that staff member’s behaviour from the perspective of their legal liability and personal responsibility to their students and their parents. What matters most is just that, not simply legal responsibility but our individual responsibility to our students to provide them the best possible care within reason.