A Practical Guide to Risk Assessments in Schools

Ask five school leaders what risk assessments they need and you'll get five different answers — usually accompanied by a shared filing problem: a folder of documents written years ago, by someone who has since left, covering activities that have changed.

This guide sets out what schools actually need, in plain English.

What the law requires

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer — including schools and trusts — to carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessments of the risks to staff, pupils and visitors. If you employ five or more people (every school does), the significant findings must be written down.

"Suitable and sufficient" is the key phrase. It doesn't mean assessing everything imaginable in exhaustive detail. It means identifying the real risks in your school and doing something proportionate about them.

The risk assessments every school should have

Every setting is different, but a typical school needs assessments covering:

• Premises and general workplace — slips, trips, falls from height, vehicle movement on site
• Fire — the fire risk assessment, which is a specific legal requirement of its own
• Curriculum activities — science practicals, DT workshops, PE and sports
• Educational visits — with proportionate assessment for each category of trip
• COSHH — cleaning chemicals, science stock, grounds-keeping products
• Lone working — site staff, cleaners and anyone on site outside core hours
• Manual handling — deliveries, furniture moves, PE equipment
• Individual assessments — expectant mothers, young workers, staff or pupils with specific needs
• First aid needs assessment — determining the cover and equipment your school requires

The five steps (and where schools go wrong)

The HSE's five-step approach still holds:

1. Identify the hazards
2. Decide who might be harmed and how
3. Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions
4. Record your significant findings
5. Review and update as things change

In practice, schools almost always fall down on step five. A risk assessment written in 2021 for a kitchen layout that changed in 2023 is worse than useless — it's evidence that your system exists on paper only.

A risk assessment is a living document. If nothing in it has changed for three years, that usually means nobody has looked at it — not that nothing has changed.

Making them stick

Three habits separate schools with genuinely useful risk assessments from schools with a folder:

• Name an owner for every assessment. Not a committee — a person.
• Put review dates in the calendar, and treat them like statutory deadlines.
• Write for the reader. The person following a science practical assessment is a teacher mid-lesson, not an auditor. Short, specific and actionable beats long and defensive every time.

How Schools Safe helps

Risk assessment support is core to our health & safety package. We review, rewrite and — crucially — schedule your assessments in the Schools Safe platform, so every document has an owner, a review date and an automatic reminder before it lapses. Your leadership team sees the whole picture on one dashboard.

If your risk assessment folder hasn't been opened this term, book a free safety review and we'll tell you honestly where you stand.