A study on occupational health and safety in educational institutions

Since the publication of the Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331, serious progress has been made in taking the necessary precautions in the work areas. This Law covers all employees regardless of public and private sector discrimination. In this context; Necessary studies are carried out in educational institutions regarding activities that should be implemented within the scope of occupational health and safety. However, despite all the occupational health and safety activities implemented, unwanted accidents are still encountered in educational institutions. This situation shows that the measures taken are insufficient and that other measures and regulations are needed. Occupational health and safety working hours to be allocated to workplaces are determined according to the hazard class of the workplaces and calculated over the number of employees. In the current legislation, the danger class of educational institutions is determined as less dangerous and the working time is calculated as 10 minutes per employee. However, while calculating these working hours, students who share the same environment with the personnel working in educational institutions and are at the same risk are not taken into account. As a matter of fact, every year in educational institutions, students experience many accidents and suffer injuries and even life losses. For this reason, it becomes essential to take into account the students' working hours in educational institutions. On the other hand, as the occupational health and safety working hours will increase with the increase of the hazard class of educational institutions from the less dangerous class, the hazards and risks will be determined in more detail and the necessary regulatory and preventive actions will be implemented more accurately. In this context; In this study, a research was conducted on the necessity of increasing the danger class of educational institutions in order to reduce the number of accidents experienced in educational institutions and to expose people in these institutions to less danger. For this purpose, field work has been carried out in 3 different educational institutions, namely primary education, high school and university in Ankara. The dangers and risks in these institutions were determined and risk assessments were made using the Fine Kinney Method. As a result of the study, necessary regulatory and preventive actions have been suggested for educational institutions to become safer environments.