Incidents in schools- incident analysis in developing safety management

Abstract

Safety is the main issue in a good learning environment. However, several changes challenge schools. The latest research explicate that all teachers are not committed to promote safety systemically as they do not have competence or procedures to promote safety at work. Very little is known about incidents and near-misses that happen at schools to be able to learn from these and manage the safety culture proactively. This paper considers incidents, near-misses and unintentional accidents at school by analyzing 168 incident reports from three comprehensive schools in Finland, using physical dimension of safety management as a framework. The thematic content analysis made it possible to construct a clear ‘big picture’ of incidents in schools, and to better understand the complex context of school. The result helps researchers, principals, teachers and administration in education to consider physical hazards and risks and prevent accidents in school and in the school environment.