Undertaking and recording risk assessments is an integral part of keeping the children and adults safe in your school or setting. Below you will find a range of risk assessment templates to use in your school and childcare settings.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the independent regulator for work-related health, safety and illness, they provide a variety of guidance and tools on how to assess and control risks in the workplace and comply with health and safety law.
Undertaking and recording risk assessments is an integral part of keeping the children and adults safe in your school or setting. It can help you identify what risks might be present, how you will manage them and how to ensure there is a consistent handling of the risk by all staff.
Risk assessments should identify aspects of the environment that need to be checked on a regular basis, when and by whom those aspects will be checked, and how the risk will be removed or minimised.
The key steps in carrying out a risk assessment:
The statutory framework for the early years foundation stage requires providers to demonstrate how risks are being managed in their setting.
Whilst there is no requirement to have written risk assessments, Waltham Forest recommends that this is done so that providers can evidence due diligence, particularly in the event of an incident or accident.
The downloads below provide guidance to assessing and managing risk, along with sample risk assessments which show the approach Waltham Forest's Health & Safety Team expects schools to take.
Every school is different - you need to think about the hazards and controls your school needs. Even where the hazards are the same, the control measures you adopt may have to be different from those in the examples to meet the particular conditions in your school.
In order to satisfy the law and protect your children and staff, you will need to ensure that any templates or document examples are personalised to your own school.
Well planned and managed school trips and off-site activities provide are hugely enriching in the learning experiences of children and young people.
Waltham Forest uses the web-based system EVOLVE to facilitate the efficient planning, management, approval, and evaluation of visits. It is currently in use in over 20,000 schools across 120 local authorities. EVOLVE also contains a variety of features including: search and report facilities, downloadable resources, a link to the National Library staff records and visit history, on-line parental consent, etc.
All staff that lead or accompany visits have access to their own EVOLVE account, which is set up by their establishment's Educational Visits Coordinator (EVC).
Schools should also refer to Local Code of Practice No. 24 'Guidance for Off-Site Visits and Related Activities with National Guidance & EVOLVE'.
Further information on planning for school trips can also be found on the HSE website.
Guidance and risk assessment information for headteachers
DownloadExample of completed risk assessment for Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH)
DownloadGuidance and risk assessment for protecting new and expectant mothers
DownloadExamples of control measures to take to reduce risks of ladder use
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