Risk management in schools is an interesting and challenging problem. There's nothing in teachers' training which helps them to understand the role and responsibilities of planning for and managing risk on excursions. And what actually are the risks? What's considered a hazard in the classroom is vastly different from what's considered a risk on the sports field, out on camp, or on an international study tour.
The On-Site vs Off-Site Gap
In years gone by, this wasn't too much of a worry as most teachers weren't involved with the sheer volume of co-curricular programs, excursions, activities, and overseas trips which now form part of a normal year at school. The focus of risk management in schools has predominantly been on buildings, grounds, and classrooms—not on the specific activities which go on outside the school grounds daily.
On-site risk management is quite different from off-site risk management. However, often there's only training available for on-site risks. This makes no sense as schools continue to run great education programs inside and outside the confines of the school grounds.
As an experienced outdoor education professional, if I were to do a walk-through of an entire school as part of a risk assessment, I would most likely miss several things because it's not my specific area of expertise. The same is true when Workplace Safety Professionals attempt to evaluate excursion risk. Unless you're specifically trained in excursion and activity risk, you're bound to miss something.
The Osmosis Problem
The only education that teachers seem to have in risk management is that at some point, they're involved in a trip somewhere, doing something, and rather than having any actual training, they're entirely reliant on learning through osmosis. The expectation that they absorb something which then magically enables them to manage risk professionally is ridiculous in the extreme. Yet that's been the industry standard.
People reference ISO31000 all the time (the international standard for risk management). However, if you've ever had enough coffee to make it through the ISO, you'll realize it's so broad that it doesn't give you any real idea about how to manage school excursion risks. It does, however, outline what the paperwork should look like.
It's like letting your English teachers learn about a text for the first time as they read it in class with their students.
Our Solution: Training and Technology
Rather than just continuing to say it's a concern and something should be done about it, we decided to do something about it.
From our 20+ years of running school excursions, camps, co-curricular programs, sports, and international tours, we created two solutions:
Professional Development Training
We developed structured, professional development training for teachers in risk management that's specific to excursions and activities. Risk management is not generic, and for school activities, it cannot be covered effectively by workplace health and safety training. When you're dealing with students, staff, transport, activities, airports, medical concerns, mental health issues, and a range of educational programs, teachers need to be trained and confident in their planning and management of these specific inherent risks.
Xcursion Planner Software
We also built Xcursion Planner from these same experiences. We saw that even when teachers received proper training, they often lacked systems to apply that knowledge consistently. The software embeds the risk management frameworks we teach into practical planning tools, ensuring excursion safety best practices are followed every time not just when someone remembers or has time.
Nobody Is 'Just a Classroom Teacher' Anymore
The more our school programs venture into the real world, the more important it is to have teachers with great risk management skills. Every time teachers leave the school gates with a group, they're responsible for the safety and wellbeing of that group. Teachers, regardless of subject expertise, should not be out on a trip, anywhere, doing anything and making it up as they go. This leads to disaster.
Building Confidence Through Experience
Over the years, I've had the best moments of my teaching career and seen the most impact when we've been out on some sort of excursion or activity. From this, we want to enable all those teachers who want to improve student learning through amazing real-world experiences to gain confidence and strength in their risk management skills.
So that every trip of which they're part is a memorable one for their students for all the right reasons.
