Duty of care for students at school is not only applicable and expected in structured learning environments, it also applies in unstructured environments such as playgrounds. The duty of care owed to students extends to times before school, during breaks and after school. Love it or loathe it, playground duty is an essential component of any teacher’s duty of care for the students at their school so it cannot be ignored.

The last time that School Governance wrote specifically about the importance of playground rosters and about staff being vigilant and active while on playground duty was in 2017. There have been many other articles that followed that referenced duty of care requirements. However, in five years, what is abundantly clear is that community expectations, a cultural shift relating to student safety and a much more clearly understood requirement for adequate duty of care have brought this duty into greater prominence.

Duty of care, as previously defined, is usually only determined by a court when there has been a breach in the level of care and a child has sustained an injury. Duty of care is based on individual circumstances and situations and staff need to assess and mitigate the risks associated with whatever class, activity or experience is taking place whenever a duty of care ‘relationship’ has been established. Teachers, whether it be in a class room, on the oval, on an excursion or while on playground duty should be clearly aware of their duty of care responsibilities and the extent to which they are expected to monitor the students in their care.

For those of you who are new to schools or perhaps new to a leadership role where you are tasked with developing and maintaining a School Duty Roster, before you commence the development of your next Duty Roster we recommend that you read this article Yard duty: Developing a roster that provides adequate duty of care for the children where we wrote:

“Before developing a duty roster, schools need to look closely at industrial requirements, the school environment, the general environment, the qualities and training of their staff, the age and abilities (and sometimes gender) of the children and a raft of other issues. The duty roster is not a document that should be left to chance. The development of the duty roster must be accompanied by clear instructions regarding the requirements for the duties, the expectations of the principal and the school and, if necessary, the outcomes for staff if they fail to attend or are deemed culpable in the event of a preventable student injury.”

When Is the Duty Roster Applicable?

In a nutshell, schools need to have staff on duty whenever there are periods of time when students are present and not engaged in structured lessons. It is very clear when students are on non-class time during recess and lunch breaks. As a general rule, schools must also exercise a duty of care over students who are on the school premises before and after school.

In our article Duty of Care Before and After School Hours: Who is Responsible? we tackled this issue head on and argued that schools must carefully consider the extent to which supervision is required before and after school in order to adequately discharge their duty of care.  It varies from school to school, and it also varies according to the needs of a school’s students and their families. Basically, schools must realise that they have a duty of care for any student who is on the premises before or after school, if there is knowledge of the students’ presence.

Duty Rosters need to be developed to accommodate this reality and families need to be reminded about when to drop off and when to collect their children from school. Often this needs to be done at least once each term with some families having to be contacted individually if they persist on leaving their children at school at times outside of the set hours for supervision. If the school ‘allows’ parents to leave their children unattended on school premises outside of published school hours, then this practice may continue until the school makes it a point to deal with the issue.

Expectations of Teachers

It is also important to note what is expected of teachers themselves.

In 2019, we wrote in Duty of Care in a School Environment - How Long is a Piece of String? that:

“Trained teachers are expected to have a higher level of accountability and therefore have a higher duty of care for students. If there is an injury, the court will determine whether a teacher has acted as a reasonable teacher would have acted in that situation.”

Therefore, whenever a whenever a duty of care ‘relationship’ has been established, teachers need to understand that, regardless of whether or not they may be personally on duty or even off the campus, they have both a legal and a moral imperative to ensure the safety of the students concerned.

Developing a Culture of Safety

Culture touches on all aspects of a school's environment and relationships.  It does not develop overnight, and above all, it stems from the school governing body, the principal and executive staff and then permeates throughout the entire school.  It is the culture of the school and the fairness of rosters that can often define how teachers approach their yard duties and how well they meet their duty of care obligations.

To develop a culture of safety, a total commitment is required from all members of the school community and this commitment must emanate and be driven from the top. The school leadership team will need to develop very clear policies and procedures that are owned by all members of the school community and staff need to receive training about these policies and procedures. These policies and procedures always need to be enforced and celebrated when they result in the outcomes that will help to embed the cultural change. The policies and procedures need to drive the preferred behaviour that takes place whenever teachers are on duty - the change in behaviour from being conscious to being unconscious would be one predictor of a pending change in culture.

Having a total school culture of safety will ensure that students have the best chance of being protected from many hazards including non-physical hazards such as bullying. In addition, a culture of safety means that everyone - employees, students, and anyone coming into contact with the school-will appreciate that they have a role to play in reducing preventable injuries and illnesses, and hopefully then take steps to fulfil that role.

The more people who are aware of hazards, who then report those hazards or incidents caused by hazards, the greater the likelihood that controls will be put in place to reduce the risk of injury to a child. 

Conclusion

While the courts will ultimately decide if the school has breached its duty of care in relation to supervision of students, it is fairly clear from a number of cases over a long period of time that the duty of care extends to providing supervision both before and after school where students are permitted to be on the school premises at those times. See for example Geyer v Downs (1977) 138 CLR 91 Introvigne v Commonwealth of Australia (1982) 32 A.L.R. 251 and Abraham bht Abraham v St Marks Orthodox Coptic College [2006] NSWSC 1107.

While being aware of the legal position regarding student supervision and duty of care is important, it is perhaps just as important for teachers to focus on creating a culture of safety through their capacity to influence the situation involved.

This means that they place their duty of care for the students, first and foremost because there is an overriding shared culture of child safety in the school, and everyone takes this responsibility and accountability on board.

Embedding a culture of safety is the probably the most effective way of ensuring that a teacher and a school meet their student duty of care obligations both inside and outside the school gates.