Health and Safety
The safety and well-being of the learners taking part in the summer schools programme is paramount and must be a key priority for summer school providers and administrators.
In December 2007, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) published comprehensive guidance, Safeguarding children guidance for higher education institutions. HEFCE strongly recommend that all providers of summer schools refer closely to the guidance in this document.
Safeguarding Children
If summer school activity is to be carried out during school time, providers of summer schools should ensure that adequate conversations have taken place with local authorities to make sure they are aware of the summer school activity and the steps which have been taken to safeguard children. HE providers will want to ensure they understand how they may be affected by requirements that safeguarding legislation places upon the schools, further education colleges and other organisations with which they work. For example, local authorities may have certain requirements that need to be fulfilled to ensure that the arrangements put in place are satisfactory and enable the school/local authority to ensure they are meeting their own legal obligations for safeguarding children. This may include requirements such as the need for a supervising teacher/local authority employee to accompany the school children. In this scenario, summer school providers should ensure that adequate preparation is undertaken for this, perhaps in the form of a staff development event. HEFCE encourage conversations with local authorities to be undertaken at an early stage of the programme to ensure the experience for the learner is not disrupted.
Providers of summer schools should ensure that staff working with minors are registered with the newly established Independent Safeguarding Authority in conjunction with the Criminal Records Bureau. Further information on the process is available from the Independent Safeguarding Authority website.
Organisations such as the local authority or the Local Safeguarding Children Board may be able to help HE providers to establish best practice. HEFCE recommend that Aimhigher summer school administrators and HE providers establish relationships with these organisations. Further information about the statutory requirements of local authorities can be found in ‘Safeguarding children and safer recruitment in education’ (DfES 2006).
HEFCE provide a ‘risk checklist’  and recommend that all summer school providers/co-ordinators should utilise this.
Child Protection
Educational Visits
Risk Assessment
Risk assessment should always be conducted or supervised by a person that is experienced and competent to do so. Do not conduct a risk assessment if you do not feel that you are competent in doing it.
A separate risk assessment should be done for every activity undertaken, and every location the activity takes place in.
If you are new to risk assessment, the Guide to Risk Assesment , produced by the summer school co-ordinators at the University of Bristol, together with their Risk Assesment Form and Incident Report Form , may be helpful. It should be stressed that this is only an example of how one university works in this area.
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