Lizzie Gait explores the key steps for carrying out a robust risk assessment to ensure staff and pupil safety, and full compliance with your obligations.

Keeping up with the legal obligations of a school can be difficult for school business managers, especially since it doesn’t always fall under their remit.

Yet non-compliance can result in hefty fines or criminal proceedings, so it is crucial that SBMs are well informed. In the area of risk assessment, business managers need to be equipped to carry out the robust risk assessments required to ensure that not only staff and pupils are safe, but that your school is protected in case of an incident.

Risk assessments can be complicated and they must be fit for purpose. They usually involve these three steps:

1. Identify the hazard.
2. Identify the level of each hazard.
3. Identify the controls or improvements that need to be put in place to avoid or reduce the risk.

To help you conduct risk assessments, download our Quick Guide to Risk Assessment learning pathway. Follow the case study example or use your own scenario and follow the steps to ensuring you know how to assess risk confidently.

Sources of risk

As well as learning how to carry out a risk assessment, this learning pathway considers some of the potential sources of risk. These might include:

• light radiation
• sharp objects
• sources of rolling or pinching objects
• electrical hazards
• layout and location of other workers
• sources of motion
• sources of extreme temperature
• chemical exposure
• harmful dusts
• possible falling objects or potential for dropping objects.

For any tasks where situations like this may arise, risk needs to be considered, rated and recorded.