The Importance Of School Trip Risk Assessment
What Is Risk Assessment?
In terms of the workplace, then a risk assessment is an important evaluation of things that could be a hazard to those that you work with as well as the public or anyone that you care for or have under your supervision.
School Trip Risk Assessment is important both for the safety of your pupils and the staff that are involved with the trip, but also to ensure that you comply with the law and are operating legally. School trips have a range of variables that can make them risky; however the HSE aims to ensure that you do not have too much red tape to deal with
Planning A School Trip Risk Assessment
One of the things that you need to take into consideration during the planning stages of an Educational Visit, is a Risk Assessment For School Trips. This involves looking at the various elements involved in the trip and seeing what the potential risks involved would be.
There are five simple stages to a School Trip Risk Assessment which are as follows:
1) Identify Hazards – the first stage is to identify what any hazards might be. Walk around the place where your school trip will be, pick out potential risks that are clear; as well as considering the age group of the children that will be under your supervision as younger children will be at risk from different things compared to older ones.
2) Establish Who Might Be Harmed And How – when you are organising a school trip it is not just your class that can be at risk but other teachers as well. Different activities; attractions and accommodation will have different potential risks. Consider whether anyone in the party is pregnant or has a serious condition or injury.
3) Evaluate the Risks and Decide on Precautions – when you have identified the hazards during your school trip risk assessment; then you need to decide what you can do to stop them causing harm to your party. The law states that you need to do everything ‘reasonably practicable’ to protect people from harm. If you can’t remove the hazard altogether then look at ways of minimising the risk that it presents.
4) Record Your Findings then Implement Them – Once you know where the risks are; then you need to record these findings and share them with your staff. In smaller establishments (five staff or fewer you don’t need to write anything down). Make all your team aware of potential dangers and how to avoid these..
5) Review and Update If Necessary – if you have the same school trip yearly, things can change and as such it is important that you review your findings and anything that needs to be updated is updated.
Why School Trip Risk Assessment Is So Important
The Importance Of School Trip Risk Assessment is that pupils are young and vulnerable and therefore as a teacher you need to ensure their safety. By undertaking a thorough risk assessment then you can ensure that a trip goes smoothly; as well as ensuring that you are operating within the law which is essential.