In Western Australia, there’s a new tourism slogan “We’re Free to Wander out Yonder” which, during this COVID-19 pandemic, is encouraging Western Australians to explore the wide-open spaces of their own state. This is all well and good for the citizens of WA and its schools, because they have the ability to travel ‘out yonder’ in WA with a very low risk of COVID-19 infection. Notwithstanding varied circumstances across the country, anecdotal evidence from many schools that we have spoken with in other parts of the country is indicating that a similar idea is being discussed at the moment in those schools, as they start planning their 2021 calendars of activity. They are still looking to plan camps, tours and excursions, but in their own backyards.
The reality is that any opportunity to take students on international tours does not exist in 2020 and, unless a vaccine is developed for COVID-19, is highly unlikely to exist in 2021. Apart from the fact that the Commonwealth and state and territory governments have almost stopped all international travel, even in ‘normal times’ schools are naturally cautious when it comes to taking students on camps, tours and excursions but particularly international trips. But the risk of having students or staff infected with COVID-19 in a foreign country would simply make most of us shudder.
We have argued in the past that risky activities need not be avoided, provided that proper precautions and safety measures are implemented. However, managing infection control generally is one matter. Having to deal with infection control of a disease that has a high mortality rate with no current vaccinations, in a third world country with language issues and possibly lower standards of health care is where we would promote risk avoidance as the most suitable control. Schools care for their students and staff first and foremost and will not, if they believe the risk is too great, place them in an untenable risk situation. In addition, and as noted in the 2014 Review of the Australian Curriculum, schools and teachers themselves have a genuine fear of being sued.
In this article, Craig D’cruz, a former principal and Jamie Bobrowski, a former school camps and compliance officer, team up together to provide schools with some insights into the strategic (Craig) and operational (Jamie) risks associated with camps, tours and excursions in 2021.
At the end of the article, you will find information about a free, online course on Excursion Risk Management, available through CompliLearn.
Craig says that, in a nutshell, of course there are.
If you type “excursion strategic risks” into a Google search, two of the first three items that come up are School Governance articles. In 2014, School Governance noted that school trips and outside activities are becoming recognised as a key risk for schools. Schools had clearly identified that excursions were a risky business and that, before excursions were approved, they needed to identify, assess and apply control strategies to excursion risks. However, the identification of the risks and the development and application of any controls often dropped onto the shoulders of the organising teachers. The second article, "Properly Considered Risk Assessments for Excursions" provides far more details and insights into how schools should be assessing the risks in relation to any camp, tour or excursion.
A major strategic risk for camps, tours and excursions is if the excursion or an activity on the excursion breaches the school’s mission or code. Schools spend many years developing their culture and their reputation and a single careless error can result in what could be irreparable reputational damage, let alone injury or death of a student or staff member.
Leaving aside the plethora of excursions that don’t have a valid educational purpose, the school would suffer immense reputational damage if an excursion was allowed to take place and either the excursion or activities within the excursion breached the school’s mission and purpose and there was an incident that resulted in injury or worse.
Other major strategic risks would include:
There are a number of key operational risks that schools should be considering when planning excursions including those ‘closer to home’ as set out below. Jamie outlines the operational risks to consider for every excursion. These are especially important when evaluating and booking new venues or suppliers.
Students
Operational risks or things that schools can control in relation to students are matters and issues such as:
Staffing
Matters for schools to consider when thinking about operational risks regarding staffing would include:
Transport
Operational risks to consider include:
Venue
Operational risks are wide ranging and so are the potential venues. They could include stadiums, beaches, classrooms, museums, courtrooms and campsites and other outdoor environments. Questions to ask as part of venue due diligence include:
Accommodation
Risks involve the actual place that you will sleep and include many of the above risks. Other things to consider are:
Food and Refreshments
Where should schools start? A good starting point is to ask these questions:
Activities
The black hole…. let’s enter:
In next week’s School Governance, Jamie will explore the practical things that schools can be doing now to prepare for the return of excursions and camps.
Risk controls should be established by the school to manage standard excursions risks such as transport and food etc. The school should be setting the controls that they expect staff to follow. In general, the usual approach to the planning of an excursion in many schools is that a staff member identifies the risks and then lists the controls.
The risk controls really are the responsibility of the school to establish and enforce. (e.g. the supervision ratios for each activity). Each excursion risk assessment will be different depending on the activities and the students attending. However, for every excursion, the lead staff member ought to be able to identify the operational risks and then know what the school expects in terms of the school risk control policy for that risk.
This is how a principal in a school (such as Craig) and their leadership team and those ‘on the frontline’ (such as Jamie) can work together to better manage excursion risks.
It is late August and schools are now planning, or perhaps finalising, their 2021 calendars. It should be fairly straightforward for schools to plan student free days, term dates, examination and reporting schedules and the raft of other administrative matters.
However, they will need to carefully consider large assemblies, celebrations of religious feast days or even parent/teacher interview nights. But these matters, like camps, tours and excursions, are very much part of the ‘value adding’ to the overall curriculum in each school.
Schools should continue to plan these ‘value add’ experiences at this stage provided that they manage both ‘old’ and ‘new’ risks and factor in that they may be using their ‘own back yard’ or be ‘wandering out yonder’.
CompliSpace has two solutions to help schools deliver simply safer excursions.
SafeTripBuilder - an excursion risk management tool that works with any excursion planning process, including paper-based or online process
PlanCheckGo - an excursion planning workflow tool that includes the SafeTripBuilder risk assessment tool
Click here to learn more and request a conversation or demo.
Earlier this year, CompliSpace conducted a webinar series on Excursion Risk Management, that was attended by leaders from more than 400 schools.
Several polls were conducted during the webinars that revealed:
CompliSpace converted one of these webinars into a free, online course and made it available through the CompliLearn Individual Explorer Account.
To access this free course for yourself:
NOTE: If you are a CompliSpace school that subscribes to the Staff Wellbeing Learning List, then this course will be available in your staff learning system, so you can assign and report on this course as PD for your teachers and school staff.
Jamie is member of CompliSpace’s Client Engagement Team. Jamie provides hands on risk and compliance experience from both the education and law enforcement sectors having spent 12 years as the Director of Governance, Compliance and Risk at St Patrick’s College in Western Victoria and a decorated 11 years with Victoria Police, where he was a Victoria Police Medal recipient. Jamie is a certified member of the Governance Institute of Australia with qualifications in Occupational Hazard Management, Risk and Compliance, Auditing, Frontline Management and Human Resources.
With 37 years of educational experience, Craig D’cruz is the National Education Lead at CompliSpace. Craig provides direction on education matters including new products, program/module content and training. Previously Craig held the roles of Industrial Officer at the Association of Independent Schools of WA, he was the Principal of a K-12 non-government school, Deputy Principal of a systemic non-government school and he has had teaching and leadership experience in both the independent and Catholic school sectors. Craig currently sits on the board of a large non-government school and is a regular presenter on behalf of CompliSpace and other educational bodies on issues relating to school governance, school culture and leadership.