There is a comfortable lie that circulates in many school administration offices. It is a belief that helps principals sleep at night and makes business managers feel secure in their contracts.
The myth is simple: "If we hire a professional external provider, the risk—and the liability—is now their problem."
It is a pervasive assumption. Schools assume that because they have hired a camp operator, a tour company, or an outdoor education provider, they have effectively outsourced the safety of their students. They believe that if a student is injured on the high ropes course or during a gap year tour, the legal crosshairs will fall solely on the company running the activity.
This is the biggest legal myth in school risk management. It is also one of the most dangerous.
The Reality of Non-Delegable Duty of Care
The hard legal reality is that a school’s duty of care is
non-delegable.
You cannot contract out your duty of care nor your liability to a third party. When parents enroll their child in your school,
they are entrusting that child to you, not to the bus company or the camp provider you hired.
In the eyes of the law, the school remains responsible for the safety and well-being of that group, regardless of who is technically running the abseiling tower or driving the bus. If a provider is negligent, the school can be held liable for failing to ensure that the provider was competent and that the activity was safe.
This misunderstanding is most acute with international trips. These are some of the most dangerous trips to run, as far too many people see them as a holiday rather than an environment with a significantly higher duty of care. If you are taking a group overseas, you are responsible for everything that happens, regardless of contract providers.
The "Paperwork Shield" Trap
This myth often manifests in what I call "compliance theatre."
Schools will often request a risk assessment from a provider, receive a generic 50-page document, file it away without reading it, and consider the job done. This is a paperwork system based purely on checking boxes and approvals, masking the fact that there is a lack of real risk management understanding.
A risk assessment from a provider is their plan for their staff. It does not account for:
Your students:
Their specific medical needs, behavioral issues, or "Bart Simpson on steroids" moments when medication is missed.
Your staff:
Their level of fatigue, experience, or decision-making ability under pressure.
Your supervision:
Where your teachers will be standing and what they will be doing while the provider is instructing.
Paperwork without training and experience is
just paperwork. It offers very little legal protection if the school cannot demonstrate that they actively reviewed, understood, and managed the risks in partnership with the provider.
The Disconnect in the Field
The danger of this myth is that it creates passivity in teachers.
When staff believe the provider is "in charge," they step back. I have seen this occur repeatedly in outdoor education: teachers arrive at camp and mentally clock off, assuming the "experts" have it covered.
However, most of the time, schools are not running these programs with highly trained, skilled, and experienced staff who plan for and proactively manage complex risks. They are mostly run by classroom teachers who have excellent academic skill sets but may be ill-equipped for the dynamic environment outside the classroom.
If a teacher has not had any formal risk management training, they effectively do not know what they are looking for. They might miss obvious red flags that a trained eye would catch.
What Good Practice Actually Looks Like
If you cannot outsource the risk, what can you do?
You must treat external providers as partners, not insurance policies. This requires a shift from passive compliance to active management.
1. Vet Your Providers Rigorously
Don't just ask for their public liability certificate. Ask about their staff training, their equipment logs, and their emergency response times.
2. Bridge the Information Gap
A provider doesn't know that Student A has anxiety or that Student B requires medication at strict intervals. Without a system to track this—like an app that timestamps medication administration—things slip through the cracks.
3. Train Your Staff
You wouldn't let a teacher teach calculus without training; don't send them on an excursion without risk management training. Teachers must take the time to learn situational awareness and contingency planning. They need to know when to step in and stop an activity if it becomes unsafe.
4. Maintain Operational Visibility
The "set and forget" method of planning excursions is dead. You need a system that ensures the right information—medical data, emergency contacts, and risk profiles—is accessible to the staff on the ground, not locked in a filing cabinet back at school.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
The consequences of clinging to this myth are severe.
Beyond the obvious human tragedy of a student injury or fatality, the institutional cost is immense. Legal cases can take six years or more to work their way through the system. That is six years of highly combative emotional trauma for school leaders and the families involved.
Furthermore, industrial manslaughter laws are tightening. In some jurisdictions, penalties for workplace fatalities where negligence is proven can be up to twenty-five years in jail for an individual and multi-million dollar fines for the organization. These charges are generally aimed at leadership, not just the person on the ground.
A Rational Path Forward
The solution isn't to cancel excursions.
International travel and outdoor education are vitally important parts of education.
The solution is to accept that
you are responsible.
Once you accept that duty of care cannot be outsourced, you stop looking for waivers to hide behind and start looking for systems to support your decision-making. You stop treating risk assessments as "just a piece of paper" and start treating them as operational blueprints.
Build a culture where risk management is owned, not delegated. Ensure your staff are trained, your systems are robust, and your oversight is active. Your students deserve transformative experiences, but they also deserve to come home safely.
Next Step: Are you relying on provider paperwork to protect your school? Review your current excursion policy to see if it explicitly addresses the "non-delegable" nature of your duty of care.
