How we guarantee the safety of our outdoor gym equipment in primary schools

30th July 2024

Typically, the headteacher and their management team are responsible for health and safety matters. So they have to work together to meet all statutory obligations, in the interests of the whole school. 

Sports and PE present particular health and safety considerations. But you can reduce potential hazards by balancing acceptable risk with appropriate challenge. Schools have to devise and maintain a risk assessment for each PE work area, while obtaining a risk assessment for all off-site visits. 

If you’re considering installing outdoor gym equipment at your primary school, you may well be wondering how to minimise safety concerns.

If you choose to work with leading provider Fresh Air Fitness for your facility, however, we make a number of assurances as to why our outdoor gym equipment is thoroughly safe. 

Gym equipment designed with kids in mind

When we fit facilities in primary schools, we install gym equipment designed for children. Crucially, it’s child-sized – because standard gym equipment, typically intended for adults to use, simply won’t meet the needs of younger users. 

Adult equipment is obviously scaled for bigger body sizes. Children will struggle to use pieces which don’t suit their physical proportions. Not only does this not give youngsters an effective workout, but it can lead to misuse and, worse, injury. 

You can trust our gym equipment

Here’s why you can fit our outdoor gym equipment at your school with complete confidence that it will be safe and appropriate for pupils of all ages: 

• Compliance: We meet UK safety standards EN1176 and EN16630 for all our outdoor gym pieces. This ensures our entire children’s range is designed and built to the same safety specification as adults, just at a smaller scale. 
• Risk Assessments: Having installed over 1500 primary school, we have documentation available to support schools through assessing and managing potential risks.
• Hand-assembled: We build each piece to the highest possible standards, before subjecting it to our six-step quality control process, along with an external check. We test all units up to 1 million cycles. 
• No entrapments: There is nowhere on any of our products where a finger or any other body part could become trapped or crushed.
• Ball ends: We have these on all our machines to avoid sharp points which could cause injuries.
• Rubber-bumpers on equipment edges: Again, this helps prevent injury, particularly from swinging parts.
• No-nonsense labelling: Our labels are consistently clear and simple, with illustrations as well as words, allowing for safe use. 
• Resistance comes from the user’s own bodyweight: So they will always work within their own abilities, whatever their level. 
• Easy-to-follow animations: We also offer a full range of animations for children to watch and understand exactly how to use each piece of the equipment safely, such as this one. 

As well as being thoroughly safe, our gyms promote imaginative play, physical literacy (defined as the ‘motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activity’) and fitness with fun. We know this is the best way to engage youngsters and get them moving and enjoying exercise sessions. 

Children queue up excitedly to use our outdoor gyms, which quickly become a hub of healthy activity in schools. We also offer a range of complementary supportive materials, including animated instructions, lesson planners and user guides.

Keeping kids active and healthy in today’s screen-bound, fast-paced world can seem a challenge; but it doesn’t have to be. Get in touch today for an initial chat about what our gym equipment could do to enhance outdoor physical activity at your school.