General responsibilities 

The employer

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, an education employer has a duty to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable:

• the health, safety and welfare of teachers/lecturers and other education staff
• the health and safety of students – in schools/colleges and during off-site visits
• the health and safety of visitors to the school/college, as well as of volunteers who are involved in any school/college activity. 

The employer is:

• the LEA for community schools, community special schools, voluntary controlled and maintained nursery schools, and student referral units
• the governing body in foundation schools, foundation special schools and voluntary-aided schools
• the proprietor or the governing body in independent schools
• the corporation in further education and sixth form colleges. 

In all schools and colleges, the employer must:

• have a health and safety policy and have made arrangements for its implementation
• assess the risks of all activities, introduce measures to manage those risks and tell employees about them
• have a clear policy of delegation, while retaining ultimate responsibility for health and safety, no matter who carries out the delegated tasks.

The employee 

Employees also have duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. 

They must:

• take reasonable care of their own and others’ health and safety
• co-operate with their employers
• carry out activities in accordance with training and instructions
• inform their employer of any serious risks they observe. 

For more details of health and safety responsibilities in schools, please see the DfES document Health and safety: responsibilities and powers (ref: DfES/0803/2001). 

Specific management responsibilities in schools 

In 2002, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) published guidance for the management of health and safety on school trips. It clarified the functions of governing bodies, headteachers and group leaders and also recommended that, as good practice, each LEA should appoint an expert on outdoor education and each school an educational visits co-ordinator. On the whole, ATL supports this guidance. 

Headteachers and governing bodies 

Headteachers have extensive responsibilities to ensure the health and safety of students on school trips, even when tasks have been delegated to other members of staff. Governing bodies that are also the employer will have similar responsibilities to those of an LEA. In schools where the LEA is the employer, governing bodies will be expected to ensure that the headteacher and other staff are supported and monitored in matters connected with educational visits. ATL recommends that each school prepares a clear written scheme of delegation for decision making. 

The educational visits co-ordinator 

The DfES guidance states that it is good practice for each school to appoint an educational visits co-ordinator. Among other things, the functions of this post are to:

• liaise with the employer to ensure that visits meet the employer’s requirements, including those of risk assessment
• support the headteacher/governors with approval and other decisions
• assign competent people to lead or otherwise supervise a visit
• make sure that Criminal Records Bureau disclosures are in place
• work with the group leader to obtain the consent or refusal of parents
• organise emergency arrangements and ensure that emergency contacts for each visit are in place • 
• keep records of individual visits (including reports of accidents and ‘near-accidents’). 

If you are asked to become an educational visits coordinator, you should research the job thoroughly and seek advice from ATL if necessary. It would be sensible for the role to be performed by a headteacher, especially in smaller school and colleges, because he or she will continue to have hands on responsibility for the work of the educational visits co-ordinator. 

ATL recommends that foundation and independent schools should have an EVC and, if necessary, build working relationships with the LEA’s outside education adviser. 

The LEA’s outside education adviser 

The DfES guidance also recommends that each LEA appoints an outdoor education adviser. 

The functions of this post include the following tasks:

• assessing the risks of all the visits that schools in the LEA undertake
• reviewing policies and procedures and disseminating good practice
• monitoring the work of educational visits co-ordinators to help identify training needs and levels of delegation
• determining which visits require LEA approval and which may be approved by the school
• approving (or barring) visits where approval does not rest with the school
• notifying schools of the minimum adult/student ratios required by the LEA • providing expert advice on visits generally and on adventure activities specifically. 

For more information about the outside education adviser role, see Standards for LEAs in overseeing educational visits (paragraphs 3, 4 and 9), available from the DfES publications centre (call 0845 60 222 60, or e-mail dfes@prolog.uk.com).

Help and advice

For more detailed advice, please refer to ATL's publication Taking students off-site.

For individual queries, please contact ATL's London office, e-mail the helpdesk, or contact your branch secretary. You may also wish to call the out-of-office-hours helpline.

If you need confidential support and advice, don't forget you can also call ATL's stress, crisis or legal helplines.