Creating a Secure Environment: The Role of Risk Management in Schools

According to the HSE, between 2020 and November 2023, an estimated 174,000 workers were suffering from work-related ill health (new and long-standing) in the education sector alone.

Overall, many sick days were taken, leaving schools critically short-staffed. Do your own experiences reflect those stats, or did you take sufficient risk management steps?

Risk management is the process of identifying potential risks or hazards, assessing their likelihood and potential impact, and taking steps to reduce or mitigate those risks. Risk management in schools is vital to ensure the safety and well-being of staff, students, and visitors alike. It’ll also reduce some of that ill health and as a consequence, ensure you remain well-staffed.

Here are some common risk management challenges faced by schools:

• Student and staff safety – An obvious risk, and the most important one. Schools have a duty to protect students and staff from harm while on site. This includes potential risks like bullying, assaults, medical emergencies, and more. Schools need strategies to identify, prevent, and properly respond to any safety issues.

• Property and facility risks – School buildings and property face risks like fires, water damage, power outages, and general wear and tear. Schools need plans to mitigate these risks through maintenance, inspections, emergency preparedness, and insurance.

• Staff hiring and supervision risks – Schools must ensure all staff & volunteers are properly screened, trained, and supervised to prevent any potential harm to students. Lacking proper hiring and supervision processes exposes schools to liability risks.

• Natural disaster risks – Although not common here in the UK, schools in areas prone to natural disasters like floods, high winds, etc. require preparedness plans to keep students and staff safe in the event of an emergency. This includes contingency plans for building damage, power outages, and community-wide threats.

• Cybersecurity and data privacy risks – The education sector is surprisingly full of large amounts of sensitive data. Schools must have robust cybersecurity protections and data governance to reduce risks of data breaches, hacking, ransomware attacks, and violations of student and staff privacy.

How can I manage risk more effectively in my school?

There’s plenty you can do. Start by creating a risk management plan. This will help you identify, assess and mitigate risks. Your plan should outline procedures, responsible staff, emergency response and reporting methods. Next, use risk management software to help you track incident reports, claims, assets, safety procedures, insurance policies and other data. It’ll help you identify risk patterns and improve oversight to keep you compliant.

Following this, you should conduct regular risk assessments. Doing so on an ongoing basis through audits, inspections and drills helps you stay current on potential hazards and shows you how effective your controls are. Finally, implement risk control measures. Things as simple as visitor check-ins, liability waivers for field trips, and regular maintenance, up to security systems, fire suppression and cybersecurity software should be used together.

How can iAM Compliant help manage my risk smoothly?

Remember that risk management software mentioned above? Well, iAM Compliant has all that and more. It features a useful risk register to keep all of your risk assessments in one place, tracked with a real-time matrix. There’s an incident reporting area to help you keep accurate records of accidents, observations and near misses. And there’s also a dashboard to help you analyse everything from your critical assets to staff signatures on documents.

Managing risk effectively is an ongoing process that requires continued diligence to identify and mitigate emerging hazards. By taking a proactive using the techniques above, schools can fulfil their duty to provide a safe environment where students can learn, and staff can work securely. Though risk can’t be entirely eliminated, risk management enables schools to prevent harm, respond quickly when incidents occur, and foster a culture of safety across the school site.

Visit our Key Benefits page to find out more about the iAM Compliant Compliance Tool. Why not take a FREE 30-day trial to try it for yourself, or book a demo with the team? We'll be happy to talk you through how our online tool can help you!