It is a scene played out in school administration offices every week. A stack of paperwork lands on your desk—risk assessments, itinerary plans, and permission notes for an upcoming camp or excursion. You scan the documents, check that the boxes are ticked, sign the bottom line, and hand it back.
Job done. Responsibility transferred to the teacher in charge, right?
Wrong.
In the eyes of the law, that signature is not just an administrative hurdle or a permission slip. It is an endorsement. By signing off, you are stating that you have reviewed the plan, you agree that the risks are managed to an acceptable level, and you are authorising the activity to proceed based on that judgment.
If that plan is flawed, or if the staff member is under-qualified, your signature doesn't absolve you of responsibility—it implicates you in the failure.
The Myth of the Rubber Stamp
There is a dangerous disconnect in many schools between the paperwork and the reality of risk. We often see a culture where the "sign-off" is treated as a bureaucratic formality. The assumption is that because a teacher has filled out the risk assessment, the risks are managed.
However, a paperwork system based purely on checking boxes often masks a lack of real risk management understanding. If you approve a risk assessment that is generic, cut-and-pasted from last year, or clearly inadequate for the specific context of the trip, you are accepting those flaws.
You cannot contract out your duty of care. Just as you cannot outsource liability to a third-party provider, you cannot entirely delegate the burden of safety to a subordinate. When a Principal or Head of School signs off on a trip, they are confirming that the school’s duty of care has been met at an institutional level.
"I Didn't Know" Is Not a Defence
When incidents occur and end up in coronial inquests or courtrooms, the "I trusted the teacher" defence rarely holds water.
The courts expect school leaders to exercise due diligence. This means asking the hard questions before the trip goes out, not just reviewing the incident report after it comes back.
Consider the tragic reality of preventable fatalities on school programs. In many cases, coroners have found that the risks were foreseeable and that the staff on the ground were ill-equipped to handle them. If you approved a high-risk activity led by staff without the requisite skills, training, or experience, the failure of governance sits with the approver.
In the "Swiss Cheese Model" of accident causation, your approval is one of the final barriers against incident. If you rubber-stamp a plan with holes in it, you are lining up the slices for a potential disaster.
Institutional Risk vs. Personal Risk
There is often a blurred line between personal risk and institutional risk. A teacher might be enthusiastic about a trip because they enjoy the destination, but they may lack the objective distance to assess the institutional risk to the school.
As the approver, your role is to bridge that gap. You need to assess the "appetite for risk" of the school. Does this activity align with our educational goals? Do we have the budget to support it properly with training and equipment?
If a school sends a teacher out with no budget for satellite communication in a remote area, or without relevant first aid training for an overseas trip, the school has set that teacher up to fail
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What Meaningful Approval Looks Like
To move away from "compliance theatre" and toward genuine safety, the sign-off process needs to be an active interrogation of the plan.
Before signing, ask yourself:
Competence: Does the staff member running this have the specific experience required for this environment? A great classroom teacher is not automatically a great expedition leader.
Currency: Is the risk assessment specific to this group, this weather, and this location? Or is it a "copy-paste" job from 2019?
Capacity: If the lead teacher goes down with illness or injury, is there a competent 2IC (Second in Charge) who can step up?
Clarity: Are the emergency response protocols clear, or are they generic statements like "call 000"?
Systemising the Process
Relying on a manual review of paper forms makes it difficult to spot trends or gaps in staff qualifications. This is where systems matter more than individual documents.
To ensure consistency, schools need a culture where risk management is developed weeks and months before the activity begins. It shouldn't be a last-minute scramble.
Implementing a digital approval workflow—like the one we built into Xcursion Planner—forces the necessary checks and balances. It ensures that critical medical information, staff qualifications, and risk protocols are visible and verified before the approval is granted.
The Buck Stops With The Process
Ultimately, you want your students to have transformative experiences. But they also deserve to come home safely.
Don’t let the sign-off be the weak link in your safety chain. Treat the approval process with the gravity it deserves. If you aren't confident in the plan, don't sign it. Send it back. Ask the questions.
Because once your signature is on the page, the responsibility is on your shoulders.
Next Step
Take a look at your current excursion approval form. Does it require you to verify staff qualifications and specific emergency plans, or just a signature? If it’s the latter, it might be time to review your governance structure.
