Resources - Archived Materials

Section Four: Recommendations - Program Delivery Issues

4.3 Health and safety needs in science education

Leaming science is a hands-on experience. However, having a class full of students doing experiments, often with chemicals, raises serious safety and health concems for students and teachers. In addition, some school science laboratories in Ontario have, for years, accumulated chemicals, many of them now considered dangerous. The Ontario Govermnent must take responsibility for developing a safety manual, comparable to those in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, that outlines safety guidelines and standards. This manual must include a list of hazardous chemicals for schools and this list must be continually updated on the Internet for reference by all schools. (At present, each school board has its own hst.) In addition, the manual must set provincial standards for chemical inventory and disposal, which will ensure that all Ontario secondary schools dispose of excess and dangerous chemicals appropriately.

At present, no special consideration is given to science class size in Ontario. Science classes are usually as large as mathematics and English classes and larger than classes in social studies, physical education, visual arts, family studies, and technology. Average class size in Ontario is now about thirty students, with classes ranging from five to forty students. The National Science Teachers Association in the United States and the Science Teachers' Association of Ontario recommend a maximum of twenty-four students. We support this recommendation to ensure a healthy, safe, and productive learning environment.

We recommend that further measures be taken to ensure safer laboratories, including the renovation of existing outdated and unsafe science laboratories and the replacement of unsafe equipment. Current Ontario guidelines suggest that laboratories allot 4.2 square metres of space per student, but this allotment includes teacher workroom and storage space as well as laboratory space. Some school laboratories in Ontario are as small as 2.8 square metres per student based on a class size of thirty. New guidelines by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA Pathways, 1996) recommend 5.6 square metres per student in the science laboratory alone. We endorse this recommendation.

Extensive safety training should be provided to all teachers in training. School boards should allocate time for all teachers to attend a hands-on science safety seminar of at least six hours in length every three years in addition to Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) training.

In addition to the safety concems directly related to science, we found that students worry about their personal safety in general. Every effort should be made to ensure a safe school environment.