Managing risks and hazards at school

To ensure a healthy and safe environment for ākonga, staff and whānau, there needs to be good systems and processes in place for managing risks and hazards. It is recommended that significant risks and appropriate responses are the focus of these plans.

Questions to consider

  • Do you have procedures in place to identify, assess and manage risks and hazards appropriately?
  • Do you have a risk register?
  • Do you know what your risks are, including those that are significant or extreme?
  • Have you ensured that there is adequate training for workers, ākonga and your community to identify and manage hazards?
  • Are risks controlled and reviewed?
  • Do workers and others in the area know about the risks and the controls in place?

Managing health and safety risks

Identify → assess → control → monitor

Identifying risks and hazards

A process should be implemented to regularly identify and assess hazards and risks.

Hazards

A hazard is a situation or thing with the potential to cause death, injury or illness. Can include a person’s physical and emotional behaviour.

A hazard is not limited to an object and can be a situation, or a person and their behaviour both physically and emotionally. It can also be unpredictable and occur at any time.

Examples: slips, trips, and falls; vehicles and machinery; repetitive movement; stress, anxiety and burnout; bullying and harassment; illnesses; loud noise; hazardous substances.

Risks

A risk is the likelihood that death, injury or illness might occur when exposed to a hazard.

Identifying risks involves considering if a hazard is an actual or potential source of harm. Does the risk of harm increase with exposure to the hazard?

You should undertake an assessment in consultation with your workers, their representatives, and any other relevant parties such as parents and those in your wider school community. Risks can be identified through the usual course of work, doing group reviews, and during planning phases for new projects.

Assessing risks

A risk assessment takes into consideration factors such as the frequency of exposure to the risk, the likelihood of harm, and previous incidents involving that risk. A formal risk assessment enables understanding of what the significant hazards are present and can help ensure resources to manage the risks are focused on the most significant.

A risk assessment can help determine:

  • how severe a risk is
  • whether existing control measures are effective
  • what action you should take to control the risk, and
  • how urgently the action needs to be taken.

The information below can help you to assess the severity of the consequences and the likelihood of injury or illness occurring, and then to assess the level of risk for each hazard.

Assessing severity 

The severity of the consequences can be rated by the degree of injury or illness that could occur: 

Consequence 

Consequence definition

Likelihood 

Likelihood definition 

Insignificant 

Nothing required 

Rare

Only occurs in exceptional circumstances 

Minor 

 

Minor injury requiring first aid (ie, small cut or twisted ankle) 

Unlikely

Does not happen often 

Moderate 

 

Injury requiring medical treatment (ie, sprained muscle) 

Possible

May occur, but not often 

Major 

 

Serious injury – specialist medical treatment or hospital (ie, broken bone) 

Likely

Occurs occasionally 

Critical

Loss of life, permanent disability (ie, neck or spine injury 

Almost Certain  

A regular occurrence 

Assessing likelihood 

The likelihood of injury or illness occurring can be rated: 

Likelihood Consequence

Assessed risk level 

Risk level 

Actions 

Low 

If incident occurs, little likelihood of injury 

Undertake with existing mitigations 

Medium 

If incident occurs, some chance of injury requiring first aid 

Additional rules or considerations may be needed 

High 

If incident occurs likely that the injury would require medical treatment 

Controls will need to be in place before undertaken 

Extreme 

If incident were to occur, it would be likely that death or permanent injury would result 

Consider alternatives to the activity or additional significant safety measures required. 

Assessing the level of risk 

The level of risk will increase as the likelihood of injury or illness and its severity increases, as the risk rating table below shows.

Once the risk for each hazard has been assessed, identify and put in place appropriate control measures, concentrating first on extreme and high risks. 

Risk rating table

Risk level

Likelihood 

Consequence

Insignificant 

Minor 

Moderate 

Major 

Critical 

Almost certain 

Medium

Medium

High

Extreme

Extreme

Likely 

Low

Medium

High

High

Extreme

Possible 

Low

Medium

High

High

High

Unlikely 

Low

Low

Medium

Medium

High

Rare 

Low

Low

Low

Medium

High

Controlling risks

You must make decisions about what risk control measures to implement, in discussion with your workers, in order to minimise risk. Risk control measures can include substitution, isolation, engineering controls, administrative controls, using personal protective equipment (PPE), adjusting work procedures/processes, making changes to equipment of facilities in the work environment.

In some cases, workers may be able to eliminate or minimise the risk themselves. A positive health and safety culture can help enable workers’ confidence in risk control.

Monitoring and reviewing risks

Controls must be regularly monitored and reviewed to ensure they are effective. PCBUs are responsible for taking action to ensure health and safety by weighing up likelihood and consequence of harm occurring, and the availability and suitability of ways in which to eliminate or minimise the risks. Managing risks is an ongoing process and needs to take into account changes in the workplace.

Review of control measures may necessitate revisions in certain circumstances eg the control measure is not effective, changes in the workplace may create new or different risks, a new hazard or risk is identified, workers or a health and safety representative make a review request.

Keeping a risk register

Keeping a risk register is good practice to record information from the risk management process.

For each identified hazard the following information should be recorded:

  • hazard and the type of harm it would cause
  • the likelihood of the harm occurring
  • the level of risk
  • current controls
  • additional controls needed
  • who is responsible for control implementation
  • monitoring and review dates.

Tools and resources

COVID-19 Risk assessment guidance – Te Mahau(external link)

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