Unfortunately, when it comes to risk management on school excursions, there's no material safety data sheets, engineering limits, or forecasts when it comes to people risks and how they're going to act, react, and behave in any given environment or situation.
Even though it's the most unpredictable and complex factor in the mix, it's often the least considered and most underestimated in excursion planning.
The Unpredictability Problem
There's no shortage of stupid people in the world. In fact, many people excel in this area every day of the week and should certainly not be trusted with open flames, power tools, or anything without smooth edges.
The problem is that when you're responsible for people who are unpredictable or prone to doing idiotic things, it's vital that you watch them and actively manage them. Unlike finding a faulty or damaged piece of equipment and replacing it with a new one, the people risk is far more emotive and complex.
The Leadership Dilemma
If you can exclude a student from activities who simply will not listen or engage, that could be the best solution, as they drag everyone else down with them. However, schools are often reluctant to take definitive action, and sadly, sometimes as leaders, we're stuck with a compounding people risk until their idiocy negatively impacts the group and someone higher up in the organisation suddenly realises that what you said in assessing the participant risk has now come true.
This is not a situation in which you want to find yourself.
Proactive People Risk Management
It's worth having good behaviour management strategies in place, such as:
Higher staff-to-student ratios for groups with identified behavioural risks
Modified programs that reduce exposure to high-consequence activities
Clear exclusion criteria documented in your excursion risk assessment before departure
Behaviour contracts that students and parents must sign as part of permission notes
Tiered supervision strategies that assign experienced staff to higher-risk participants
The Compounding Risk Effect
As with any other individual component of excursion risk, behaviour alone isn't necessarily critical. With a good leader, more often than not, any single risk factor in isolation is not a major concern.
However, throw in a bit of bad weather, forget or misuse some vitally important piece of safety equipment, and you're now shaping up for some major issues. This is where people risks become dangerous not in isolation, but in combination with other factors.
How Xcursion Planner Addresses People Risks
Managing unpredictable student behaviour requires systematic approaches, not just hoping for the best. Xcursion Planner helps schools proactively manage people risks through:
Student Risk Profiling
Document behavioural concerns, medical conditions, and participation limitations directly in student profiles. This information follows students across all excursions, ensuring every trip leader has the context they need before departure.
Supervision Assignment Tools
Match your most experienced staff with your highest-risk students. The platform lets you strategically assign supervision based on student needs and staff capabilities, rather than leaving it to chance or last-minute decisions.
Behaviour Tracking and Incident Reporting
Create a longitudinal record of student behaviour on excursions. When a student consistently demonstrates poor decision-making across multiple trips, you have documented evidence to support exclusion decisions or modified participation.
Communication Systems for Real-Time Management
When student behaviour escalates during an excursion, trip leaders can immediately alert other staff, update risk assessments, and modify activities. This beats hoping everyone "just figures it out" when things go sideways.
Pre-Departure Risk Reviews
Force a systematic review of participant risks before every departure. The platform won't let you skip this step, which means someone has to explicitly acknowledge and plan for the known troublemakers before they board the bus.
The Three-Component Framework
When you're reviewing your excursion risk management systems, it's well worth considering the interaction of these three components in the context of your organisation:
Environment (weather, terrain, location risks)
Equipment (vehicles, safety gear, facilities)
People (students, staff, external providers)
Understanding how the level of risks escalate as one or more aspects are compromised will help you build far greater situational awareness. This keeps your risk management practices alive to ensure safe operations and great educational outcomes.
The Bottom Line
People risks don't fit neatly into spreadsheets or risk matrices. They're messy, emotional, and often politically charged within schools. But ignoring them or hoping they'll sort themselves out is negligent.
The excursion leaders who consistently run safe programs aren't the ones with perfect students they're the ones who acknowledge the people risks upfront, plan for them systematically, and have the courage to make hard decisions before those risks compound into crises.
Because the most dangerous phrase in excursion planning is: "They'll probably be fine."
