Adopted: December 8, 2020
Policy
The Board of Education places a high priority on establishing and maintaining a safe and healthy environment for all students. Providing students with opportunities to be physically active on a daily basis is part of this healthy environment; it has a positive impact on their physical, mental and social well-being. At the same time the Board of Education recognizes that physical activity can involve risk of injury, including concussion.
All partners in education, including the Ministry of Education, district and school administrators, educators, school staff, students, parents, school volunteers, and community-based organizations, have important roles to play in promoting student health and safety. It is important for all of these partners to foster and maintain healthy and safe environments in which students can learn. To this end, the Board acknowledges the need to provide guidance to the field in the areas of concussion awareness, prevention and management.
A concussion, which can only be diagnosed by a medical professional:
- is a brain injury that causes changes in the way the brain functions and can lead to symptoms that can be physical (e.g., headache, dizziness), cognitive (e.g., difficulty in concentrating or remembering), social/emotional (e.g., depression, irritability), and/or related to sleep (e.g., drowsiness, difficulty in falling asleep);
- may be caused either by a direct blow to the head, face, or neck or by an impact to the body that transmits a force to the head that causes the brain to move rapidly within the skull;
- can occur even if there has been no loss of consciousness (in fact most concussions occur without a loss of consciousness);
- cannot normally be seen by means of medical imaging tests, such as X-rays, standard computed tomography (CT) scans, or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
A concussion can have a significant impact on a student’s ability to function – cognitively, physically, emotionally, and socially. It is therefore important to a student’s long-term health and academic success that individuals working with students: (1) have an awareness of the seriousness of concussions, (2) recognize the value of concussion prevention and (3) have effective concussion management procedures.
Administrative Procedures
