Educational visits are a great benefit to the development of children, providing opportunities to broaden their horizons and enrich their education and life experiences.
Schools are required to plan visits, taking into consideration the type of visit, location, and activities. While routine visits will involve no more than an everyday level of risk and will be covered by the school’s existing policies and procedures, for higher risk activities, your school will need specialist staff with specific skills.
Haringey Health and Safety has prepared a written procedure which all maintained schools must follow. The Procedure HSP25 Organising Educational Visits is available on the Haringey Traded Services (Novus) website along with all Haringey procedures and forms.
Additionally, Maintained Schools must use the Evolve system to plan visits for category 2 and 3 trips. Definitions of trip categories are detailed in the procedure. Schools are also required to appoint an Educational Visits Coordinator, who should:
- be an experienced visits leader
- have the status to be able to guide the working practices of other staff
- be confident in assessing the ability of other staff to lead visits
- be confident in assessing outside activity providers
- be able to advise headteachers and governors when they’re approving trips
- have access to training, advice and guidance.
For category 3 visits (residential and adventurous,) schools need to have local authority approval prior to visits taking place. Using the Evolve system facilitates this by placing all the necessary documentation into one location; the system automatically notifies the local authority when trips are ready for approval. The local authority can then evaluate the information provided and either approve the visit or advise schools if additional information is required.
Finally, schools are required to submit category 3 visits on Evolve six weeks ahead of the planned date. This is to allow the LA to evaluate the information and where required for schools to add or amend documentation.
If your school does not have an Educational Visits Coordinator or the existing co-ordinator requires training, please contact health.safetyadvice@haringey.gov.uk. The Health and Safety Team will provide training.