Legal expectations of principals and educators regarding their duty of care in South African primary schools

Abstract: We live in a world where the expectation of educators is to ensure learner safety in a way that absolves them should an injury occur during a school activity. In order to do this, they have to ensure that they can prove that all necessary steps were taken for activities to be safe, they have looked at all possible dangers and followed the prescripts of what a ‘reasonable person’ (or the parent) would do to prevent injury in a situation. All situations differ and each case needs to be judged on its own merit; however, the result of an injury is that the educator and the school are held responsible in most instances. Educators are expected to ensure learner safety and should take necessary precautions to prevent injury to learners. While the learners may be exposed to many dangerous situations during the school day, educators and the principal should have knowledge of the legal principles regarding liability and use these precedents to avoid injuries wherever possible. In recent years, we have seen a number of court cases where duty of care has been neglected to be put into practice, resulting in serious injury or the death of learners where it has been found that death or injury has resulted from the dereliction of duty by the educators, school or principal...M.Ed. (Educational Leadership and Management