A few weeks ago, I published the article, Why Now is the Time That Schools Should Be Planning Their Camps and Excursions in answer to the numerous questions I’ve been getting from schools about what they could be doing this semester while camps and excursions are on hold. That article explored why reviewing excursion risk management is critical and my approach to risk management from my experience as a school’s risk and compliance officer and a policeman.

This article explores some practical things that schools can be doing now and includes insights from schools that are being proactive with their planning now.

In a career that spans over 25 years in community safety, child protection and consulting for CompliSpace, where I work with hundreds of schools, principals boards and school staff annually. I have written this article to suggest what schools can consider now under these changed circumstances due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Right now is an important time to consider a number of significant factors.

Planning

Camps and excursions are integral components of a year level program and offer students so many benefits.

Schools have been forced to cancel excursions to external venues and, in many cases, have chosen to replicate the experience back at school so that the students don’t miss out. At the moment, as schools plan their calendars for 2021, they are also planning for music camps and retreats as well as more curriculum-based incursions such as science week activities or emergency services days to be onsite rather than offsite. In terms of regular physical education, I am aware that many schools are looking at using their own venues for their curriculum-based programs, like indoor cricket, volleyball and lawn bowls, that would normally be scheduled externally. Many schools are also already canvassing venues that are ‘COVID friendly’.

One New South Wales school shared with me:

“While COVID-19 has seen an end to camps and the almost daily routine of buses taking kids on excursions within and beyond Port Macquarie, our school is actively doing numerous incursions and local excursions - like local school sport with venues that have COVID-safe plans.”

Pending a vaccine being made available in the next few weeks, we know that we will not be travelling across the border or jetting off overseas any time soon. This means that if schools do go ahead and use offsite venues next year they will most likely be using closer-to-home sites and venues that they they've never used before or even heard of let alone previously seen and inspected.

One thing that might present a problem though is that other schools will be doing the same thing! The schools I am working with at the moment that are being the most proactive are the ones that are already looking for these alternative venues. If you haven’t already booked your venue for next year, you might want to get your staff to confirm those bookings now, because other schools may swoop.

Whether planning onsite incursions or offsite camps or excursion, it’s important to consider ‘the people’ i.e. school staff and external providers’ staff.

Internal ‘people considerations’ include ensuring that your staff are appropriately qualified. Schools can be using their time now to update staff records and determine the level of qualifications of their staff. These include first aid (and wilderness training for those in the outdoor education department), water safety, lifesaving high ropes, map reading, orienteering and anything else that may be relevant to your program. One school in Melbourne that I deal with is auditing their whole staff credentials in relation to camping now, have identified many areas of improvement and are scheduling professional development internal and online training for post exams this year in term four.

In addition to credentials training, schools are also training staff on excursion risk management. A poll conducted during a recent CompliSpace webinar on Excursion Risk Management (answered by over 350 non-government school leaders) revealed that 88 per cent of schools don’t train their staff on excursion risk management, yet it’s teachers who do the risk assessments. This is probably the reason that another poll revealed that 80 per cent of risk assessments are sent back for amendments when submitted to approvers.

Many schools are using this excursion ‘down time’ to address this gap. As one Queensland risk and compliance officer said:

We’ve had time to review our excursion risk processes and how to improve them for our current activities and planned excursions and camps. We’ve upgraded our processes and are training staff,

And a Victorian risk and compliance officer said:

when we get back to normal, it’s going to be full-on! We’ll be sending kids everywhere and it’s great to know we’ll be set up, staff will be trained and we’ll be ready to go.

CompliSpace recently released a free course on Excursion Risk Management. Learn more about this at the end of this article.

Different Venues, Different Risks

Whether it is a shift to holding a previously offsite event onsite or using a new and unknown venue, there will be a completely new risk profile for the particular incursion, excursion or camp.

While some of your staff, and the students for that matter, will be excited about the prospect of a new venue, a new venue poses a significant threat to the school leadership because a new venue means a full risk assessment to protect the people in your school’s care. Schools can’t just assume that the venue is safe, that the activities are appropriate, and that the food is suitable.

There needs to be a complete and thorough inspection or hazard identification exercise, and a new risk assessment for every operational risk, to identify hazards that potentially could cause an injury to a student or a staff member as an injury is a reputational risk issue.

Venue/Site Visits

As identified in my previous article, the What, When, Why approach to planning camps and excursions is a simple way to start thinking about hazards and risks. The most effective way (and my recommendation for you) to consider your people, places and hazards and risks concerns for new (and existing) venues is for your risk and compliance staff to inspect the venue in person. An email or phone call with a venue owner will not provide you with the same insight as inspecting the site in person. So grab the school fuel card, and hit the road and start inspecting your venues. Consider these tips for ensuring that you are covering all your operational risk obligations.

Once at the venue, when I chat with the owners or managers, I always bring out a camps and excursions checklist to ensure that I’m asking all the right questions when I have the owner’s or manager’s attention and a cup of tea in hand.

Food and Beverages

One of the things that I do is arrange for the venue to provide a morning tea or a lunch. Not only is a cup of tea a great opportunity to meet and greet informally to share your objectives for the camp or excursion, a lunch or morning tea is also a great way to get inside the kitchen to get a good look at the meal preparation areas, the fridge and the dining rooms and inspect the state of the equipment, like the chairs, plates, knives and forks.

Activities and Equipment

One of the main reasons to visit a site or venue is to try a few of the activities. And what better way than by trying out the flying fox, paddling a canoe across the lake or challenging yourself on the low ropes course.

While it is always nice to have a play, in all seriousness, the main reason I always played on the equipment or inspected the canoes and the low ropes course was purely and simply to conduct a much higher level of due diligence that an email document can provide. Inspecting the equipment for myself was my way of assuring the principal that I was comfortable with our students attending the venue.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but by playing on (or inspecting) the flying fox I was also making sure that I inspected the routine maintenance schedules of activities like high rope courses. Another little trick that this former policeman used to do was poke his head into the equipment sheds, it was here I could see where all of the equipment was stored and instead of just picking up a canoe, I was actually inspecting the equipment and identifying potential hazards, like fuel storage, damaged equipment or evidence of snakes and mice etc.

Accommodation

Inspecting a venue for overnight stays gives you a chance to see firsthand where staff and students will lay their heads after a day of fun.

When inspecting your accommodation, take into consideration the toilet and shower facilities, and ask yourself questions such as:

• are there appropriate shower screens?
• where are the staff shower facilities located?
• are the toilet and shower facilities safe, clean and hygienic?
• (oh and because we know every year nine camp has one daredevil) where are the fire extinguishers in each of the rooms located?

General

It’s important to understand the venue’s approach to a range of matters including their approach to food-related and environmental allergens including whether they have their own epipens on site. You will also need to obtain copies of staff Working With Children Checks, public liability insurance certificates and emergency management plans. You will also want to ask about the location of the defibrillators and first aid kits and the local hospital and whether there is ambulance access.

Conclusion

There really is just so much to consider when planning for a camp and excursion or an incursion. The time that you invest in the planning and preparation phase for activities for your staff and students must be allocated appropriate resourcing time and energy to ensure that you are doing everything in your power to minimise, reduce or eliminate the potential for a hazard that may bring about an injury to a student or staff member or even worse also bring about a front page newspaper article with your school on the front for all the wrong reasons.

Want to Chat about Your Excursion and Incursion Risks?

If you'd like to review your excursion risk,  I'd love to grab a virtual cup of tea with you to have a chat. Simply click here to request a conversation with me.

Or click here to learn more about how CompliSpace helps schools deliver simply safer excursions. 

Free Online Course on Excursion Risk Management

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:

• 88% of schools do NOT train their staff on excursion risk management
• 80% of the time, excursion approvers reject risk assessments that have been submitted by teachers
• 83% of schools have no record of their excursion pre-departure briefing
• 82% of schools do not conduct post-excursion debriefs

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:

• Visit complilearn.com
• If you have an Individual Explorer Account already, access it via the Login button in the top right
• If you don't, simply click the orange button that says "Free Individual Explorer Account" and sign up
• Search "Excursion Risk Management"
• Choose the course that says "Excursion Risk Management"
• Select "Begin Here" and follow the prompts

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.