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Schools, adventure and insurance

A claims culture

Letters to the Editor. Illustration: Paul Scott
The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.

Sir, – It was heartening to read of the primary school in Co Meath which is fostering more adventurous play and activities among its pupils (“‘Parents were apprehensive’: the school where ‘risky’ play is on the timetable”, Education, November 26th).

As someone who in the late 1950s at the age of eight was allowed unsupervised to wander around the sea-edge at Killiney and peer over the perilous crags of Dalkey quarry, I can empathise with today’s teachers who want to inculcate a sense of acceptable risk in children.

But there was no mention of insurance in the article. It would be interesting to know more about this. Does the school have to deal with the deadening hand of the insurance industry – fuelled, it must be said, by a claims culture? And if so, how? – Yours, etc,

IAN d’ALTON,

READ SOME MORE

Naas,

Co Kildare.