As school leaders, we always have a lot going on. We invest significant time into planning, preparing itineraries, and gathering permission slips. Yet, the reality is that the moment you leave the school grounds, you enter a highly dynamic and uncontrolled environment without clear and consistent parameters. This is where traditional school excursion risk management is truly tested, and where we often see even the most thorough plans begin to unravel.
Inside the classroom, teachers operate in a highly structured and controlled environment with clear timeframes and consistent parameters. Outside the classroom, however, is dramatically different. The skills required for these offsite programs are often quite different from those inside the classroom.
The Disconnect Between Paperwork and Reality in School Excursion Risk Management
Many schools rely heavily on documentation, claiming they have a great paperwork system in place. However, a paperwork system based purely on checking boxes and approvals masks the fact that there’s a lack of real risk management understanding and implementation.
When you are dealing with students, staff, transport, disparate activities, and remote operations, there is no shortage of complex considerations which need to be made in relation to the planning for and management of risk.
Paperwork without training and experience is just that, paperwork.
It can be dragged out to accuse staff of this or that in an attempt to deflect blame, rather than being a support mechanism for decision making and good operational practices. Teachers usually are not specifically trained for and often ill-prepared for the environment outside the classroom.
Why Plans Unravel: The Human and Environmental Factors
Even when you plan and prepare for everything, you can find yourself caught by situations far more intense than anyone predicted. Plans rarely fail because the itinerary was written incorrectly; they fail due to dynamic environmental shifts and human factors.
Unpredictable Environmental Shifts
A morning might start with clear blue skies, hot, humid and not a hint of breeze. Yet, weather can change rapidly, and a severe weather warning can be issued, meaning you might have to adapt your plans immediately to avoid heading into dangerous conditions. What begins as a routine hike can quickly turn into a situation where teachers are dealing with a severe storm and hypothermic campers.
Fatigue and Decision Making
Good decision making is one of the best risk management strategies you can have. Good outdoor leaders will continually see something that hasn't gone to plan, assess the problem, and adapt accordingly.
However, fatigue destroys this capability:
Fatigue adversely impacts the ability of a teacher to make reasoned, informed decisions.
Research has shown that multiple shifts of work and not sleeping for 24 hours has the same effect on decision making that being drunk has.
When people are fatigued, their reaction time slows, their ability to solve complex problems is significantly inhibited, and their ability to perform even the most-simple tasks becomes compromised.
Our focus narrows further and further into a tunnel vision that cripples our ability to make sound, reasoned judgment.
What Schools Commonly Get Wrong
Often, it is a case that many schools only put training in place for their staff and focus on safety after they have had a significant incident, injury, or even a fatality on one of their programs.
Furthermore, the focus of risk management in schools has predominantly been on buildings, grounds, office spaces, classrooms and boarding houses and not on the specific activities which go on outside the school grounds on a daily basis. The fact is, on-site risk management is quite different from off-site risk management.
The expectation that teachers absorb risk management skills through osmosis, which then magically enables them to manage risk in a well-planned and professional way, is ridiculous in the extreme.
What Good Practice Actually Looks Like
Every time our teachers leave the school gates with a group, they are responsible for the safety and well-being of that group. To ensure plans do not unravel disastrously, schools must shift their focus from compliance theatre to practitioner-led competency.
Teachers must take the time to train for situational awareness, contingency planning and how to be adaptable and flexible. Good risk management occurs weeks, months and years before a school excursion or activity even begins. Schools need to allocate money for good quality training, equipment and reviews for all the programs they run which involve a level of risk.
System-Level Thinking and Support
When you are out in the field, small administrative tasks can become major hazards if not managed systematically. For instance, teachers get lumped with the huge responsibility of administering medications when they take students away on camps. It is so easy to forget medication because one distraction on camp can lead to another, and while every teacher is trying their best, things can slip through the cracks.
Providing operational frameworks and tools that genuinely support staff is crucial. Utilizing platforms like Xcursion Planner, which features built-in tools like medication reminder alerts and timestamped tracking, helps ensure every pill gets to every student on time, every time.
Managing risk with students in a dynamic environment is a specific skillset and a culture which must be developed and supported over time through effective planning, ongoing training, transparent reporting, review processes, and regular stress testing. When schools address this disconnect between documentation, implementation and culture, they can run great experiential education programs for everyone.
