Abstract:

Introduction:
In 2013, EU-OSHA (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work) published a report titled 'Safety and Health at Work and Education.' A “Whole-School Approach” to OSH (Occupational Health and Healthy) was proposed that integrated risk education and school safety and health management throughout the school’s activities and the way it functions, making them part of school life. Also, actively involved staff and pupils in school safety management and improved both risk education and the learning environment for staff and pupils. Consequently, it stated the crucial role of education in shaping citizens' understanding of health throughout their adult lives; also recommended that young children in nursery, kindergarten, primary, and secondary education be progressively taught about general health concepts, safety, well-being, and social aspects, including work. Teachers are seen as key actors in promoting and consolidating a culture of health and safety protection, which is seen as essential for achieving adequate social and economic development. Despite recent efforts in Spanish centers could be falling short of the established ideal in this respect. This survey is part of a larger project aimed to comprehensively assess the state of health, safety, and risk-prevention training in the Primary Education Teaching degree (PETD) across public Universities in Spain.

Objective:
To examine whether students enrolled in the PETD-program at the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) consider health, safety, and risk prevention training during their undergraduate studies to be important for their future careers as teachers. Additionally, to determine whether the training received on this subject is perceived as sufficient for their prospective role and functions as primary schoolteachers.

Material and Methods:
A two-phase quantitative study was conducted: In phase-1, an ad hoc questionnaire was developed and validated to collect data.
In phase -2: the validated questionnaire (Alfa-Cronbach: 9,8) was online administrated to students in their final year of PEDT-program at UNIZAR (before the end of the academic year and under supervision & approval of UNIZAR's Data Protection Office). It was completed by 150 students (62.76% of the total enrolled in the course).

Results and Discussion:
98% of the surveyed students agreed that acquiring competencies in health and safety during their university degree is important to them. 97.3% also agreed on these aspects should be incorporated into PED-studies. 95.3% declared insufficient training on them during their university degree and 94.7% not being informed about 'whole school approach'. In terms of how they rated the importance of the different health, safety, and risk prevention issues: students could have rated those few risks in which they had received training more favorably. The current work highlights the significance attributed to training in health and risk prevention by students pursuing this degree. Furthermore, they are perceived needs for training in this field. Finally, it has been found that graduates consider themselves insufficiently trained to act as school-based trainers on basic health and safety.

Conclusions:
The importance of providing fundamental pre-service training to future primary-school teachers at university is underlined. Training should focus on acquiring essential skills in health, safety, and risk prevention, as well as safeguarding their own well-being.

Keywords:

Health and risk prevention university training, Primary school teachers training, University training of primary school teachers, whole school approach in Occupational Health.