FAQs

In answering this question one needs to be mindful of the following:

• The duty of care would continue to reside with the teacher recommending the experiment

• A risk assessment would still need to be done

• The level of supervision will vary widely from student to student - and in some cases, supervision may not be available during working hours

• Classroom teachers will be unfamiliar with the students remote learning working environment

• Siblings of students are likely to be present in the home while any experiment is being conducted

• Materials required for the experiment will have a cost and some student's families may be experiencing financial difficulties at this time.

• Students and their family members should not be encouraged to do extra travel to collect materials and/or conduct the experiment.

While these considerations do not prevent an experiment being performed at home - it does curtail the range of experiments that could be undertaken.

Only those experiments that meet the following criteria should be considered:

• The experiment has had a risk assessment completed by the classroom teacher

• The experiment has been assessed as low risk on the risk assessment ( the lowest rating available to a teacher in Risk Assess)

• The classroom teacher has assessed the experiment - safe to conduct in a home setting

• No adult supervision is required

• No travel is required

• Conducting the experiment does not involve the student breaking social distancing requirements and

• Materials required to conduct the experiment are readily available within the students home

Note: In the event, an experiment is conducted - teachers should have an alternative task for those students who are not able to complete the experiment from home.

Student research projects can still be conducted as usual as long as:

• teachers explicitly address risk management with students (standard practice)

• students conduct a risk assessment as part of the project and this risk assessment is reviewed and approved by the classroom teacher (standard practice)

• projects are reviewed and vetted by teachers on the basis of safety (standard practice)

• supervision levels are appropriate and written into the student's risk assessment (standard practice)

• materials /equipment required are readily available within the home (new requirement)

• no travel is required to complete the project (new requirement)

• social distancing requirements are met. Note: Students are not required to social distance from family members living in the same household. (new requirement)