Safety first

All schools take risk and emergency management seriously but many find ensuring school safety a daunting challenge. Dr John Twigg provides a conceptual framework to help your school prepare for unforeseen eventualities

Schools need to acquire a range of technical skills. They are faced with a multiplicity of guidelines and official regulations, and as society becomes more risk-averse they are under pressure to minimise risks to their pupils and staff. It is easy for school leaders to feel overwhelmed by all of this.

With risk and emergency management becoming more complex, it is essential to keep a keen overview of school safety and adopt a coherent approach that links different areas of activity. A helpful starting point is to use a simple conceptual framework to look at school safety in the round (see diagram for an example).

The main use of a framework is to carry out comprehensive assessments of a school’s capacity for managing risks of all kinds (or at least all major risks).

The assessments could be rapid mapping exercises or more deliberative and analytical. They might be carried out by individuals or groups. Self-assessments involving a range of school stakeholders are likely to be particularly beneficial for raising awareness and generating commitment. Repeat assessments should be carried out to monitor achievements and changes.

Inner issues
The following capacities are those that the school possesses with the actions that it takes to manage risks. They can be grouped into six areas, and an assessment should look at all of these.

1. Learning: all relevant teaching and learning activities carried out in the school. This includes teaching and learning specifically about hazards, risks and emergencies relating to the school and its pupils (such as fire drill training and PSHE teaching about road safety) and teaching and learning on related subjects across the curriculum which might back up direct learning (such as geography teaching on flooding);
2. Management: overall arrangements and responsibilities for decision-making, management and implementation of emergency and risk management measures (including the work and duties of school governing bodies), school policies for health and safety and emergencies, operating procedures (such as risk assessments, fire drills) and systems for monitoring and evaluating progress;
3. Resources: these include human resources (staff knowledge and training) and creation of a culture of safety among staff and pupils, material resources, information resources, and financial resources;
4. Location and structures: the physical aspects of the school and its immediate environment (including site security, the resilience of buildings and their contents to hazards, physical hazards arising from the state of the buildings and materials used in them, evacuation routes and access to the school by emergency services);
5. Families and inclusion: communication and engagement with families on safety issues (in the school and at home), and child protection; and
6. Events and activities: off-site activities (such as trips) and out-of-hours events on-site.

Conventional risk and emergency management guidelines address some of these issues, but they pay little or no attention to two important aspects: how pupils’ understanding of risks and how to manage them can be reinforced through the curriculum; and using the family environment to reinforce health and safety messages.

Outer issues
School managers will wish to focus on the school environment, but should not lose sight of contextual factors supporting or affecting the school’s capacity to stay safe. These are part of the external environment, which is also divided into six elements.

1. Concepts: theoretical and conceptual developments in learning and school governance relevant to emergency and risk management, and in emergency and risk management relevant to schools;
2. Legislation and policy: relevant national laws and national and local regulations and policies;
3. Institutions: government and non-governmental organisations that can provide material, financial and technical support;
4. Evaluation: external systems for assessing school safety (such as local authority and fire service health and safety checks);
5. Resources: human, material, information and financial; and
6. Local environment: other hazards in the locality that might affect the school, its staff, pupils and their families.

Ensuring school safety is a long-term process. It should start with a clear view of the school’s existing capacities and what needs to be done. This will inform school decision-making and help to guide the process.

Source: “Staying Safe”. A Conceptual Framework for School Safety:
www.benfieldhrc.org/activities/misc_papers/Staying_safe.pdf

Dr John Twigg is a researcher and consultant on disaster risk management at the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, and is a school governor. He can be contacted on j.twigg@ucl.ac.uk

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