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Ensure the safe use of outdoor space and resources

Measuring Impact and Success

You need to show how you have ensured the safe use of your outdoor space and your resources and how this has had a positive impact on staff, pupils and other relevant stakeholder experiences. 

Some examples for measuring impact include: 

  • Ask pupils for feedback on their outdoor learning experience, showing the impact of being/feeling safe when learning outdoors and when using the outdoor learning resources. You can compare and contrast their responses from before safety procedures were implemented to after and note any differences.
  • Gauge staff feedback about how prepared they feel before working safely in the outdoor space and what additional support they might need or want. 
  • Gather feedback from everyone involved after a safety-related incident, ensuring that all stakeholders were heard and acknowledged and that their needs were met during and after. (This will not be possible if there have been no incidents.)

Remember in each case to describe the impact of your actions (that is, what difference they made) and not just what you did.
 

Overview

Everyone in your school must be kept safe while using resources associated with outdoor learning and/or when outdoors. However, this does not mean that all risk needs to be eliminated and that no one can have any fun; rather, it is about understanding how to minimise danger while maximising the benefits of being outdoors.  

Secure more buy-in and enthusiasm by involving everyone in your school, including pupils of all ages, in the set-up and execution of safe outdoor learning. Everyone will then be able to enjoy a sense of autonomy and independence and your outdoor learning provision will be more successful. 

Intentions

Intentions are actions you intend to take in order to improve your provision in this benchmark. Choose three intentions to focus on.

Helping pupils develop their ability to calculate and take risks supports their learning.  Being safe when learning and playing outdoors is essential for everyone’s enjoyment. It is also important to remember that everyone can be involved in encouraging each other to use the space and resources/equipment safely. If the space, resources and equipment are not safe, they cannot be used. 

One of the most effective ways of gaining buy-in from all stakeholders is to involve pupils. First, ensure pupils understand what it means to be safe in the outdoor space and when using resources. They can then consider how to pass this information on to others. It might be in the form of a simple poster or series of posters that can be displayed around the school and act as a useful reminder. Alternatively, pupils might like to be more creative or playful in the way they share information with others – perhaps with an assembly, a video, a drama sequence or a segment in the newsletter. They will need to consider the most important messages that need to be conveyed and how they can relay them effectively. 

You might like to demonstrate the impact of involving the pupils, in how much more effective it is to have them involved. It will be useful for them to see the effect of their involvement too. 

Top tips

  • Provide space, time and inspiration for pupils to create a mean of encouraging safety with resources and in the outdoor space. 
  • Support a normative approach rather than a punitive one, so pupils understand how to promote safety instead of using scare tactics. 
  • Ensure the messages are revisited regularly and are not a one-off mention. 

Keeping resources and equipment well maintained and in good condition is essential to the effective operation of your outdoor learning provision. For example, wood-whittling equipment needs to be kept sharp and stored correctly for it to be most effective, as blunt and poorly stored knives are more likely to cause injury. Similarly, you will need to ensure your outdoor space and resources are vetted regularly and all areas are maintained to an appropriate standard. 

Make sure you have a system in place for regular and thorough checks of all resources and equipment. You can use the template provided here or come up with your own system. It will work better if you share the responsibilities for keeping all resources and equipment to a high standard of safety, so the obligation does not lie with just one person. 

Top tips

  • Ensure that all equipment that you purchase or source for your school is well-made and easy to maintain, so that safety checks do not become onerous. 
  • Make sure you have a procedure in place for when equipment and resources need to be replaced or updated because they are no longer safe. 
  • Consider asking a parent to help with this. 

Template
Download and adapt this safety checks template for your outdoor learning provision.

This is about supporting pupils to take appropriate responsibility for themselves when outdoors and manage any risks concerning identified hazards on site. Hazards within your school could include a pond, a steep-sided outdoor area, an adventure playground or some types of vegetation, like nettles. 

Help your pupils take responsibility for their safety by asking them what hazards they think are on site. Their responses could reveal things that adults had not previously considered. The more you can involve pupils, the more they will be engaged in the process and can be autonomous, where appropriate.

It is important to note that identifying hazards does not necessarily mean that people should avoid them. Rather, it is about encouraging pupils to take notice, to recognise hazards and to manage themselves safely and appropriately. 

Your safety briefings need to be fit for purpose. Children who are very young and are still in the early stages of development will require adults to handle hazards more readily than more developed children (age is not the best indicator of the level of ability to handle hazards). Think about what you will need to brief pupils on and why: are you sharing information for their genuine safety or so that adults do not have to supervise much? That is, are you imploring pupils to avoid hazards so that adults do not have to worry so much?!

Top tips

  • Create a schedule of safety briefings, so pupils become accustomed to the cadence of the sessions.
  • Ensure you provide briefings on a variety of topics to keep it varied so that it does not become dull and repetitive. 
  • Ensure parents are part of the process too, in case there are any pupils who need additional support around hazards and might not have shared this information with you.

There is always a possibility that first aid will need to be administered in any learning environment – and that possibility can increase when learning outdoors, for a variety of reasons. Therefore, it is vital that staff and pupils (to an appropriate degree) are prepared and well trained. Having people competent in first aid is an essential part of operating as an outdoor learning school, so you need to provide relevant and appropriate training. 

The type and level of first aid training will be based on meeting needs; in essence, the age and stage of development of your pupils will direct the type of training required, as will the type of school you have, and the availability of staff on site. There are plenty of external training providers available (see the list in Further resources); however, you might like to provide some training in-house, to reduce costs, if this is appropriate. 

For adults, you might like to operate a system where only a couple of staff members are fully trained in outdoor learning first aid (those who deliver the most outdoor learning), then have members of staff with slightly less responsibility who have a less detailed level of training, and so on. This hierarchy streamlines staff training staff and encourages it to be the responsibility of the most appropriate staff members. 

You will need a different starting point for pupils: what do they already know about first aid and where are the gaps? Can these gaps be filled by adults on-site?  

Top tips

  • Guarantee that you have a fully up-to-date and complete first aid kit available for all outdoor learning opportunities. 
  • Maintain a schedule of who needs to be trained and when, so that everyone is up to date and trained to an appropriate level.

Further resources

The type of emergency procedures you might need to prepare for will differ from school to school. Therefore, you will need to consider what is relevant and create awareness around that. Think through possible scenarios and plan what you need to do if any of those eventualities arises. Depending on the age and stage of development of your pupils, you might like to do some of this with them, so they can be part of the planning process. Record everything you discuss in a document that is accessible for all. 

You will need to think about how you will liaise with emergency services, if necessary, so consider creating a site card or similar. Include a map with the access points and routes for emergency services and write in the relevant postcode, ‘what3words’ phrase, grid reference for each access point, landmarks and car parks, all so you can easily describe the location over the phone using these phrases and numbers.

Once emergency services arrive, you will need to pass on accurate information to them. Consider how you will prepare this and how you could also use it as an incident report card. You can create your own or use our template. 

One of the most important elements in preparing for emergency procedures is communication: think about how you will share vital information with those who need to know it – from pupils to staff to parents and beyond. Ensure this communication extends to running drills and practising what to do in an emergency, so everyone is armed with the information and skills they need. Spending time on planning and preparing will save time and possibly lives in an emergency situation. 

Top tips

  • Tailor your emergency procedures to suit the age and stage of development of the pupils, so that information and expectations are pitched at a level they can understand and action easily. 
  • Ensure that your procedures are updated regularly as a matter of course, but also when information changes.

Template

Download and adapt this incident report card.

Improving outdoor play and learning opportunities for pupils of all ages and abilities should be a key objective for teachers and practitioners. This means exposing pupils to a degree of managed risk. The challenge is to do this without putting them in undue danger of serious harm. 

A risk-benefit assessment rises to this challenge by taking a balanced, thoughtful approach. The result will be a more engaging, enjoyable learning experience and more opportunities for healthy growth and development. 

Managing the health and safety of pupils and staff in outdoor learning is vitally important. With careful planning and conduct, outdoor experiences can be both safe and stimulating. Many outdoor learning activities carry no higher risk than activities and situations faced by pupils on a day-to-day basis.

Involving your pupils with the completion of a risk-benefit analysis will allow them to identify risks posed to them, provide an opportunity for critical thinking on how to mitigate or reduce these risks and empower them in the outdoor environment. 

Your risk-benefit analysis should work alongside your school’s Health and Safety Policy (provided as a template here).

Top tips

In planning and considering risks and benefits, ensure you consider: 

  • the level of challenge appropriate to the pupil group
  • how risks will be assessed and balanced against the benefits that can be expected
  • the rationale for this experience as justified even if events do not go according to plan
  • the management arrangements appropriate for the location selected
  • the leadership and supervisory staff are appropriately skilled, qualified and experienced
  • how you communicate about safety and risk with parents
  • whether there is any benefit in enrolling partners in the process
  • if there any relevant examples of good practice on which you can draw. 

Templates

Further resources

Reflection

Think about:

  • Meeting needs: how does your outdoor learning provision meet safety needs and is it applicable to all relevant stakeholders? How do you know what their safety-related needs are? How will you know if their needs are being met? Make sure you ask everyone for their input. 
  • Promoting safe outdoor learning: how do you encourage staff to promote safe outdoor learning to all pupils and their families? Do staff feel comfortable and safe themselves with the outdoor learning programme? If not, how do you know? Can they be supported differently? Are staff members confident in supporting all pupils with safe outdoor learning? Is there a common understanding of what a safe outdoor learning space looks like and feels like? 
  • Updating the training: how regularly do you update the safety training programme and is it an ongoing process for all relevant staff? Are there several and varied safety training opportunities provided throughout the year? If new staff members join your school, are their safety training needs a priority? Can staff members have informal, ad hoc or refresher safety training when needed, perhaps from the outdoor learning lead? 
  • Management and support: how do you manage the outdoor space and how are staff supported to use it safely? 
  • Evaluation: how do you evaluate your outdoor learning safety procedures and use feedback to shape future procedures? What evaluation methods will you use? How will the evaluation knowledge be used? 
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