School trips are invaluable learning experiences, but they also come with a range of risks that need to be carefully managed. Developing a comprehensive risk profile is essential to ensure the safety of students and staff while maintaining the educational value of the excursion. The ISO 31031 risk management standard provides a framework to guide schools in identifying and addressing potential hazards, from minor injuries to major emergencies. With proper risk management training for staff, schools can effectively mitigate risks and ensure that every trip is safe, well-planned, and aligned with organizational objectives.
 
Creating a Risk Profile for School Trips
 
A risk profile outlines the potential risks associated with a school trip and serves as the foundation for risk management planning. By understanding the specific risks a trip may pose, schools can create effective strategies to mitigate them. This process involves identifying various types of risks, including health and safety risks, financial risks, reputational risks, and those related to student well-being. Here’s how each category plays into building a strong risk profile.
 
Health and Safety Risks
 
The most immediate concern for any school trip is the health and safety of the students and staff. Potential risks could range from minor injuries, such as slips and falls, to more serious emergencies, like severe weather conditions, accidents, or health crises. Schools need to assess the activities planned, the environment, and the capabilities of the participants to identify potential hazards. ISO 31031 helps schools standardize their risk assessment process, ensuring that all aspects of health and safety are considered, and that staff are trained to handle emergencies.
 
Student Well-Being
 
Beyond physical safety, student well-being is a critical component of the risk profile. This includes addressing emotional, psychological, and social risks that students might face during the trip. Homesickness, anxiety, and bullying are potential risks that can affect students’ overall experience. Schools should assess the mental and emotional preparedness of students and ensure that staff are trained to support students in managing these challenges.
 
Financial Risks
 
Financial risks are another important factor to consider when planning school trips. These could include unexpected costs due to cancellations, changes in travel plans, or medical emergencies requiring additional resources. Having adequate insurance coverage and contingency funds is crucial. Schools must evaluate the financial feasibility of the trip and ensure that it aligns with their budget, while maintaining a safety-first approach. Proper training ensures that staff can manage financial risks, avoiding unnecessary costs without compromising student safety.
 
Reputational Risks
 
A poorly planned or mismanaged school trip can lead to reputational damage for the school. Whether it’s due to a safety incident or logistical failures, the consequences of bad press can harm the school’s standing within the community. Schools must ensure that every trip upholds the highest standards of safety and organization, mitigating reputational risks. ISO 31031 provides the framework to help schools manage these risks by ensuring that every aspect of the trip is well-organized and in compliance with safety regulations.
 
The Role of ISO 31031 in Building a Risk Profile
 
ISO 31031 is an essential tool for building a risk profile that covers all potential hazards related to school trips. It encourages schools to take a systematic approach to risk management, providing clear guidelines for assessing and mitigating risks. Risk management training for staff based on ISO 31031 ensures that everyone involved is prepared to handle any situation that may arise, protecting students and reducing the likelihood of incidents.
Building a comprehensive risk profile is critical for ensuring the safety and success of school trips. By identifying health and safety risks, financial risks, reputational risks, and student well-being, schools can create effective risk management plans. Using the ISO 31031 framework and providing staff with proper risk management training ensures that every trip is well-prepared, safe, and aligned with the school’s objectives.

​Urban international trips, such as visits to bustling cities like Paris or New York, offer students the opportunity to experience rich culture and history. However, these trips also come with increased security risks, including theft, large crowds, and even terrorist threats. ISO 31031, the international standard for risk management in travel, provides a tailored framework to help schools prepare and manage these security risks in urban environments, ensuring that students remain safe while exploring the world.
 
Preparing for Safety in High-Traffic Urban Areas
 
Major cities are often high-traffic environments filled with busy streets, crowded tourist spots, and unfamiliar surroundings, all of which can pose security challenges for school groups. ISO 31031 helps schools develop specific safety protocols for these urban settings. It includes strategies such as briefing students on staying in groups, maintaining constant communication, and identifying secure routes for travel and activities. These proactive measures reduce the likelihood of incidents like theft, accidents, or students becoming separated from the group.
 
By implementing ISO 31031, schools can ensure that both students and staff are fully prepared to navigate the complexities of urban areas while minimizing risk.
 
Collaborating with Local Authorities
 
An important part of ISO 31031’s security framework is collaborating with local authorities and security services. Schools are encouraged to establish connections with local law enforcement, embassies, or security experts who can provide valuable insights into the security landscape of the city. This collaboration ensures that schools are aware of any current risks or threats, such as areas to avoid, protest zones, or heightened security alerts, and can adjust their plans accordingly.
Additionally, by understanding local emergency services' procedures, schools can act swiftly if an incident occurs, ensuring that students receive the assistance they need promptly.
 
Trip to Paris
 
Consider a group of students visiting Paris for an educational trip. Prior to departure, the school briefs students on ISO 31031 protocols, which include staying in groups, avoiding risky areas, and staying alert in crowded spaces. During a visit to a popular tourist destination, staff members—trained under ISO 31031 guidelines—remain vigilant and notice suspicious activity. Thanks to their preparedness, they quickly intervene, preventing a potential pickpocketing attempt and ensuring the group’s safety.
By following ISO 31031’s security framework, the school successfully mitigates risks, creating a safer and more controlled environment for students to explore the city.
 
Urban international trips offer incredible learning opportunities but also present unique security challenges. ISO 31031 equips schools with the tools to manage these risks effectively, from ensuring student safety in crowded urban areas to collaborating with local authorities. By adopting this comprehensive standard, schools can confidently plan urban trips with robust security measures in place, allowing students to enjoy enriching experiences while staying safe.

What Are You Risking When It Comes to Activities Outside the Classroom?
 
As school leaders, we always have a lot going on. There are so many programs which now run outside the classroom. The skills required for these are often quite different from those inside the classroom.
 
On the one hand, we have a highly structured and controlled environment with clear and consistent parameters around the nature of classroom activities and definitive timeframes on how long a teacher is responsible for the students and those activities. If something goes wrong, you can either call the office for support or send a student to get help. Generally speaking, teachers are well-trained and prepared for the classroom environment.
 
Outside the classroom, however, is dramatically different. It’s now a highly dynamic and uncontrolled environment without clear and consistent parameters. Activities can vary dramatically in length and nature. This means the type of supervision required and the skills and experience needed to conduct these activities is dramatically different. Teachers usually, are not specifically trained for and often ill-prepared for the environment outside the classroom.
 
When you’re dealing with students, staff, transport, activities, airports, foreign cultures and laws, medical concerns, mental health issues, disparate activities, remote operations and communications, there are no shortage of complex considerations which need to be made in relation to the planning for and management of risk.
 
Consequently, the level of real risk involved in any sort of offsite activity and the exposure of school leaders to the liability which comes with this can be significant. When I was a head of school, this was something of which I was well-aware, not only due to my background, training and experience in outdoor education but added to this the first school I ever worked at had had a fatality a matter of months prior to my starting, after which safety was at the forefront of everything.
 
Having worked in such a broken organisation and devastated community, this shaped my thinking on risk management and safety. That was over twenty years ago. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the contributing factors which led to the tragic death of that boy in 2000 occur again and again, mainly due to the disconnect between the reality of the skills and experience which classroom teachers have in the structured environment versus the skills and mindset needed for unstructured environments.
 
Often, it’s a case that many schools only put training in place for their staff and focus on safety after they’ve had a significant incident, injury, or even a fatality on one of their programs. This should never be the case and yet we see it happen, time and time again. When, looking at the tragic outcomes of these situations and the subsequent evidence presented in court, they are invariably easily preventable incidents if only the teachers had some basic training and experience outside the classroom.
 
Nobody is ‘just a classroom teacher’ anymore. The more our school programs venture out into the real world, the more important it is to have teachers with great risk management skills. Every time our teachers leave the school gates with a group, they’re responsible for the safety and well-being of that group. With the sheer volume of co-curricular programs, excursions, activities and overseas trips which now form part of a normal school life, it is now more critical than ever that teachers have training skills and experience in both the classroom environment as well as outside the classroom.
 
The reality is that if this skills’ gap is left unaddressed, this becomes a critical risk to every school and its leadership and something which could potentially sink you. If something like this ends up in court, on average, these sorts of cases, take around six years to work their way through the system. That’s six years of highly combative emotional trauma for school leaders, the staff who were on the program and the families involved. But we know the cost is always greater than that on so many levels.
 
As an educator, activities outside the classroom have always been a huge part of my work and the benefits to a student’s overall educational experience can be phenomenal. I never want to see these great programs which schools run cut back or cancelled due to fears that they’re too risky. If staff are untrained in risk management outside the classroom, I would agree they are too risky and shouldn’t be run. However, with specific training and support in risk management outside the classroom for those same staff, the risk profile of all these activities changes dramatically and can form some of the most amazing educational experiences which are memorable for all the right reasons.