22.2 Integration of safety messages in school disciplines

Description

What does this measure refer to and what is its objective?

This measure refers to the insertion of content about railway safety in different disciplines within the school’s curricula and in accordance with the children’s age (e.g. mathematics, physics, geography etc.) to indirectly teach the pupils about the danger of the rail tracks.

Recommendations

Best practice and lessons learned

  • Ask education experts for help.
  • Differentiate between the pupils’ different age categories.
  • Better acceptance if safety education is included in normal disciplines lessons program.
  • Below there are some examples of disciplines which could include safety education:
    • LITERACY (Year 4 – 5): Design a poster to warn children about the dangers of going on to railway tracks, Use Track Talk to produce a newspaper report on an incident of someone taking a short cut over a railway line.
    • MOTHER LANGUAGE CLASSES: Describe a journey on a train. Talk to other children about what you saw, felt and heard, Use the I Dare You script as a basis for a drama workshop highlighting the dangers of playing on or near railway lines.
    • MATHEMATICS: Interpret a railway timetable. Represent the data for one train as a time-distance line graph. Use pictograms to compare and contrast the number of passengers carried in a car, a bus, a train and an aircraft.
    • SCIENCE: From safe locations, watch trains and road traffic go past. Talk about how fast or slow trains and vehicles go. Ask children about the loud sounds made by vehicle horns, the emergency vehicles and trains. Ask why trains sound their horn. Make up a tape (or CD-ROM) of the different warning sounds made by different forms of transport. Ask the children to identify them. Talk about the particular dangers of electricity on the railways including overhead cables and third rail. Use sheets of card to create shapes similar to the front ends of trains. By children running across the playground holding the shapes in front, illustrate how air resistance can be reduced so that trains may go faster.
    • DESIGN & TECH: Examine and discuss the different features of cars and trains and label the different parts. Investigate and discuss the features of a security light on railway property to deter vandals.
    • ICT: Ask the children to design a safety poster for passengers standing on the platform. Collect pictures showing different ways of travelling. Ask the class to say which mode of transport they have used. Use the information collected to create a database on transport used by children in the class. Use one of the rail simulation programs downloaded from the Internet to show how simulations can be used in training.
    • HISTORY: As part of a local history study, describe how various local people reacted differently to the building of the railway. Hold a debate with some pupils adopting a pro-railway view and others being against the railway coming through their town.
    • GEOGRAPHY: Why are boundaries needed to keep people away from railway tracks? Talk about what a boundary is and why there are fences near railways and stations.

Warning points

Expected difficulties and issues you should pay attention to

  • May be difficult to implement formally, because it needs discussions between the school management and teachers and may occasionally require approval from the Ministry of Education to modify the curricula.

Observations

Other points that you should not forget

  • Could be implemented informally and individually by teachers who understand the important implications of this. One way of succeeding could therefore be to individually approach teachers in high risk schools (e.g. schools situated near railway tracks) and to persuade them to get involved.

Study results

Data or other evidence supporting the measure's effectiveness

  • Some general information concerning effectiveness of this measure can be found in the RSSB report (2003a).

last update: 2014-09-16