When working with children and young people, you must make sure you have enough staff and volunteers to keep children safe. Adult to child ratios are different depending on the children and young people in your group, your setting and the activities you're carrying out. You must also ensure adults are suitable to undertake the tasks you need.
Supervision requirements may vary depending on the children's age, gender, behaviour and the abilities in your group. Carry out a risk assessment of the activities you are planning, taking the issues above into consideration. This will help you decide how many adults you need and what skills and experience they should have. You should carry out a range of safer recruitment processes and checks to ensure you employ the right people to work or volunteer in roles that have contact with children.
The types of checks needed will depend on the nature of the work being carried out, and whether or not the work will be supervised by other staff members.
Parents who attend activities with their children should not be used to supervise other children unless they have been recruited into the role, undergone the necessary checks and had the relevant child protection training. Schools are expected to carry out their own risk assessment at the beginning of each academic year to determine appropriate levels of supervision for each class except the Early years and foundation stage. Schools also need to carry out a risk assessment to determine appropriate adult to child ratios at breaks and lunchtimes.
Things to consider include:. For children in the Early years and foundation stage there is specific guidance about supervision ratios - find out more in the section below. In England , the Department for Education DfE publishes guidance for early years providers which sets out statutory requirements about adult to child ratios DfE, The required adult to child ratios vary depending on the setting and the age of children.
