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School Risk Assessments: What Schools Need to Assess and How to Get It Right
From classrooms and playgrounds to science labs, school trips and site maintenance, schools face a wide range of risks to manage. A robust school risk assessment process helps protect pupils, staff, visitors and contractors. But having assessments on file isn't enough, you need to know risks are being identified, controls are working, and actions are being completed.
For Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), there's an added challenge: can you demonstrate the same standards across every school in the Trust? Here's what you should be assessing and how to strengthen your approach.
What risk assessments should schools have?
There isn't a single definitive list of risk assessments. The ones you need will depend on your premises, pupils, employees, curriculum, equipment and activities. Some of the areas may need to assess include:
Slips, trips, and falls: Corridors, staircases, playgrounds, uneven flooring, spillages and damaged surfaces
Higher-risk curriculum activities: Practical subjects such as science, design and technology, PE and other activities involving specialist equipment, substances or processes
Maintenance activities: Routine and planned maintenance, work at height, access to plant areas and tasks involving tools or equipment
Classrooms and teaching spaces: Considering factors such as layout, access and egress, storage, equipment and activities taking place within the space
Lone working: Employees working alone or outside normal hours, including site, cleaning and other staff who may be working without immediate support
Work-related stress: Identifying workplace factors that could contribute to stress and considering appropriate measures to manage them
Fire safety: Fire hazards, evacuation arrangements, escape routes, alarms, fire doors and people who may need additional assistance
Asbestos: Managing asbestos-containing materials, particularly where maintenance, refurbishment or other work could disturb them
COSHH: Cleaning products, science materials and other hazardous substances used or stored on site
Manual handling: Lifting, carrying or moving equipment, furniture and other loads
Work equipment: Ensuring equipment and machinery is suitable, safe to use, inspected where necessary and properly maintained
Educational visits: Considering the risks associated with school trips, residential visits and other off-site activities
PE and playgrounds: Supervision, activities, equipment, surfaces and facilities
Contractors: Managing risks created by construction, maintenance and other contractors working on school premises
Individual needs: Where pupils, employees or visitors may require specific arrangements or additional controls
Legionella: Identifying and controlling risks associated with water systems, including appropriate monitoring, maintenance and management arrangements
This isn't an exhaustive list. You should determine which risk assessments are required based on the hazards and activities within your environment, which may then mean conducting school health and safety training courses to support your plans.
How do you carry out a school risk assessment?
A simple five-step approach works well:
Identify the hazards: Look at your environment, equipment and activities. Speak to staff and consider previous incidents and near misses.
Consider who could be harmed: This could include pupils, employees, visitors, contractors or members of the public.
Evaluate the risk: Review existing controls and decide whether further action is needed.
Record and act: Document significant findings, assign actions and make responsibilities clear.
Review: Check controls are working and update assessments when circumstances change.
How often should school risk assessments be reviewed?
As a general approach, you should formally review their risk assessments at least annually to check they remain suitable and reflect current arrangements.
However, an annual review shouldn't mean waiting until the scheduled date if there is reason to believe an assessment is no longer valid. Some assessments or control measures may also require more frequent review or monitoring depending on the nature of the risk. An earlier review may be needed:
Following an accident, incident or near miss
Where there is reason to believe the assessment is no longer valid
Following significant changes to buildings, facilities or working arrangements
When new equipment, processes or activities are introduced
Where there are changes affecting pupils or employees
When new information about a hazard becomes available
Where monitoring shows that existing controls aren't working as intended
Reviews should also check whether previously identified actions have been completed, rather than simply updating the review date.
Where do schools commonly go wrong?
Having risk assessments on file doesn't automatically mean risks are being managed effectively. Common gaps include:
Failing to review assessments regularly: Including allowing the annual review date to pass without checking whether the assessment is still suitable and sufficient
Poor communication: An assessment has little value if the people affected by it don't know what controls they are expected to follow
Generic assessments: Using templates that haven't been adapted to reflect the school's actual environment, activities or risks
Outdated information: Assessments that no longer reflect changes to premises, equipment, people or working practices
Outstanding actions: Identifying further controls but failing to make sure they are completed
Unclear ownership: Actions are recorded without making it clear who is responsible for implementing them
Paper versus practice: Controls are documented but aren't consistently followed in day-to-day school operations
Risk assessments should be appropriately communicated to the employees and others who need to understand the hazards, controls and actions relevant to them. The aim isn't simply to produce a document, it's to make sure the controls identified are understood and applied in practice.
An independent Health & Safety audit can help schools identify these gaps and provide greater assurance that arrangements are working as intended.
What about Multi-Academy Trusts?
For MATs, the challenge is rarely whether individual academies have risk assessments - it's consistency and visibility across the Trust. Can your central team confidently see:
Which assessments have been completed?
Where significant risks exist?
Which actions remain outstanding?
Whether standards are consistent between academies?
Who is responsible for resolving issues?
WorkNest supports MATs with Trust-wide audits, risk assessments, competent-person support and ongoing specialist advice, helping central teams establish a consistent approach across multiple sites. Our Health & Safety technology (SafetyNest) also gives greater visibility of activity and outstanding actions, creating a clearer audit trail across your organisation.
Get help from specialist school risk assessment services
If you're not confident your risk assessments are up to date, or you want greater assurance across your Trust, WorkNest can help. Our education UK Health & Safety specialists work with schools and MATs to identify risks, review existing arrangements and put practical controls in place.
Speak to our Education Health & Safety team to find out how we can support your school or Trust.
FAQs
They identify what could cause harm, who might be affected, and what controls are needed to manage that risk. A good assessment should establish:
What are the hazards?
Who could be harmed?
What controls are already in place?
Is further action required?
Who is responsible?
When should it be reviewed?
Most importantly, it should reflect what's happening in your school, not simply what's written down.
Yes. Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers (including schools) must assess risks to employees and others affected by their activities and put proportionate controls in place. Department for Education guidance reinforces this, setting out how you should apply these duties in practice.
Risk assessments shouldn't be treated as a one-off compliance exercise. They need to stay relevant as your school, people, and activities change, all to enhance health and safety in school in the long-term.
Need help identifying gaps? WorkNest's education Health & Safety specialists can review your existing arrangements, carry out risk assessments and provide practical recommendations.
They’re essential as they identify hazards, protects the wellbeing of pupils and staff, but also ensure compliance with strict UK legislation. The process systematically identifies hazards and creates ways for your school to address these risks, ensuring a safe environment.
They’re monitored with routine schedules (such as annually) and event-driven triggers, such as if there’s an accident or near-miss, there are changes to the premises, or updates to national safety advice. The school governing body ultimately holds legal accountability, but the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and DfE (Department for Education) ensure guidance and statutory frameworks to follow.
If you're not confident your risk assessments are up to date, or you want greater assurance across your Trust, WorkNest can help. Our education UK Health & Safety specialists work with schools and MATs to identify risks, review existing arrangements and put practical controls in place.
