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This was published 7 years ago
Spike in threats to schools and staff safety reports at ACT Schools in 2016
Threats to ACT schools spiked in 2016 and figures reveal the number of safety incidents reported by staff almost doubled.
School safety was under the spotlight with the ACT Education directorate releasing an update on the roll-out of reforms arising from the autism cage scandal.
Education Minister Yvette Berry.
Education Minister Yvette Berry confirmed the directorate had implemented 15 of the 50 Schools for All recommendations tabled in November 2015 by the expert panel on students with complex needs and challenging behaviour.
Catholic Education had achieved seven of their 26 recommendations.
After mid-year concerns bureaucratic snags were impeding the implementation progress, Ms Berry said she was encouraged to see momentum building and was confident remaining recommendations would be completed in a "timely way."
"The schooling sectors have made a three-year commitment to achieving sustainable change and we are making sure we take a holistic approach, working together to achieve this," she said.
However, the education directorate's 2015-16 annual report reveals safety concerns had not abated.
The report revealed there were 27 critical incidents in public schools, five in the catholic system and another six in independent schools.
Twenty-three incidents in public schools related to threatening phone calls and resulted in lockdown, evacuation or temporary closure and another two cases involved the disappearance or suspicious removal of a student.
At independent schools there were five cases of lockdown, evacuation or temporary closure between January 1st and June 30, 2016.
The annual report described this increase as "abnormal".
But an education spokesman said as the terms of reporting critical incidents had changed across the education sector, it wasn't possible to supply comparative figures from previous years to contextualise the jump.
The annual report highlighted an investigation of the telephone threat incidents in ACT schools identified a link to similar incidents experienced by education systems elsewhere.
"These phone calls are a national issue and international issue, with many schools across the country and the world impacted – including non-government schools," the spokesman said.
"We will continue to work with our police colleagues on this issue and recognise the distressing impact it has on families, students and staff."
There were 33 notifiable incidents reported to WorkSafe in the year, including in relation to asbestos, electricity or events where a worker was hospitalised or sought medical treatment.
A slight rise on the 31 incidents reported the prior year.
The directorate was issued with one WorkSafe improvement notice on September 2015 about a single incident involving a band saw. This notice was removed after the school made improvements to safe work methods in their workshop area.
Worker work health and safety reports rose by 76 per cent, from 680 in 2014-15 to 1201 this year.
The annual report described the near doubling of reported safety concerns as "a significant improvement in reporting" and reflective of the introduction of RiskMan a new software roll out across the directorate.
Student accident and incident report numbers were also up on last years figures, with 1578 cases reported compared with 1491 the previous financial year.
However, third party incident and accident report numbers fell. There were eight reported compared with 21 in 2014-15.
A education spokesman said the 5.8 per cent increase in student accident and incident reports was largely due to higher enrolments.
"The number of students increased by 3.2 percent over the same period," the spokesman said. "The Directorate has also placed emphasis on early and comprehensive reporting of accidents and injuries."