As someone who’s worked in risk management for over two decades, one of my biggest frustrations is seeing schools and organisations wait until they’ve had a major incident before truly getting their act together on safety. Far too often, it’s only after a crisis – sometimes a truly devastating one that the urgent drive to implement effective systems and get the right people in place finally takes hold.
Why is this a consistent pattern? Are we simply wired to think that nothing bad will happen on our watch? Is it a form of blissful ignorance, where we genuinely don’t know what we don’t know? Or is it simply a lack of care?
To be brutally honest, I firmly believe it’s rarely a lack of caring. People enter education to help others, to nurture and empower students. Generally, educators genuinely care about student wellbeing. The core issue lies elsewhere: the primary focus of teaching and teacher training is, understandably, classroom practice. While lessons don’t always go to plan, the need to mitigate against significant external risks often isn’t perceived as a central part of their professional identity or initial training.
The Peril of Unconscious Incompetence
The real problem often boils down to what we call ‘unconscious incompetence’. You simply don’t know what you don’t know. How can someone be expected to expertly manage complex, dynamic risks on an excursion, a sporting event, or an international trip if they’ve never received specific training in that domain? Just because someone is a brilliant classroom teacher doesn't mean they're automatically equipped to manage a group in an unstructured, unpredictable environment far from the school gates.
The result? Most things might go to plan, but when something doesn't, the response often becomes improvised. This 'making it up as we go' approach can quickly exacerbate a problem, needlessly escalating a minor incident into a major one, with far more damaging consequences for staff, students, and the school's reputation. Once a school has gone through this harrowing experience, the focus on risk management suddenly becomes very real. But by then, it’s too little, too late. The horse has already bolted.
I’ve seen firsthand the profound and long-lasting fallout when a school has had to confront a significant incident. While thankfully rare, the impact ripples for years, affecting individuals, the school community, and the entire culture. And the heartbreaking truth is, many incidents that still occur regularly are completely preventable. We have the knowledge, the experience, and the technology available to stop so many of them from ever happening. So, why the inaction?
Moving from Blind Spots to Clarity
Specific training is essential to bridge this gap. This initial professional development helps move individuals from that stage of 'unconscious incompetence' to 'conscious incompetence'. It can be quite confronting, even eye-opening. Suddenly, staff realise the very real holes, gaps, and risks in the programs for which they’re responsible. That uncomfortable realisation is the vital first step; it’s what prompts them to actually do something about it.
With experience and further training, individuals then transition into 'conscious competence'. At this stage, they truly understand risks, implement controls, and actively work towards comprehensive risk management goals, fostering a proactive safety culture within their organisation. This is where you see genuinely good risk management systems operating within schools, ensuring quality practices for fantastic educational programs with minimised risks.
It's Never Too Late to Be Proactive
It’s vastly easier, and infinitely less devastating, to invest in a bit of training and implement good risk management systems before a crisis hits. Dealing with the fallout from an incident the investigations, the trauma, the reputational damage
is exponentially more difficult and costly than prevention.
To avoid the inevitable 'train wreck' where lives, careers, and reputations are damaged, schools must proactively commit to specific, practical risk management training. Empowering your staff with the right skills and leveraging the right systems, processes, and technology is how you build a resilient, safe, and truly exceptional educational environment. That's the real fix for the reactive cycle of school safety.
