Across Australia, more than 80% of school principals are experiencing critical incidents in their schools, including violent security threats, mental health crises, suicide attempts and medical emergencies.
A report released in November 2024 by the Australian Catholic University's (ACU) Institute for Positive Psychology and Education revealed the most common critical incidents reported by Australian school leaders include security threats (21.2%), mental health crises (12.3%), suicidal threats or attempts (10.8%), bullying (10.8%), and medical emergencies (9.9%).
Know when to call in expert advice
With Term 1 about to begin, ensuring critical incidents are avoided – or can be effectively managed if they do occur – is a priority for school leaders.
However, Adam Foster, a partner in Colin Biggers & Paisley's employment and safety team, says there are some important elements that schools tend to miss when setting up their critical incident response plans. One of these, says Foster, is knowing when to call in expert legal advice to triage the incident appropriately.
“For example, managing a serious injury on site is distinct from managing a cyber incident [but both are critical incidents],” Foster told The Educator. “For a serious injury, you are concerned with the injured person as well as inadvertently exposing other individuals to the injury.”
Foster said when it comes to managing a cyber incident or ransomware issue, the type of impact from exposure to that critical incident is again of a different kind.
“Leaders should review their critical incident response to ensure that it remains fit for purpose in terms of risks to be managed, appropriate responses and personnel,” he said. “Other safety risks should be reviewed within the school to avoid the need for the critical incident response plan.”
Lax approaches come with big legal risks
Depending upon the type of critical incident, the legal risks to principals can be significant, Foster pointed out.
“Where there is an injury at the school [or school related event], there is a risk of a personal injury claim being made by the victim and a health and safety prosecution,” he said.
“For example, where a person is injured because of a building defect, those persons within the school who had sufficient knowledge of the defect, the risk it presents and steps that could be taken to eliminate the risk could be liable to be sued personally as an officer under health and safety legislation.”
Alternatively, says Foster, where an incident occurs and the principal ought to have known about the risk of injury, but did not because steps were not taken to assess risk, the principal may be deemed reckless and subject to prosecution.
Getting ahead of the curve in Term 1
In this ‘quieter’ part of the school year, Foster said there are some simple steps that principals can be taking to mitigate potential critical incidents.
“Engage expert legal advice to assist you with a safety audit of site safety,” he said. “It’s better to have any risks assessment conducted under legal professional privilege so that any gaps you spot are not gaps a regulator or another party could also find out about.”
Foster said leaders should also review their critical incident response plan.
“Leaders should look at whether their critical incident response plan is still fit for purpose in terms of identified key personnel and stakeholders, identified risks, responses, reporting and review,” he said.
“Finally, it is important to educate people regarding the critical response plan and conduct a mock scenario to assist with people understanding their role in the plan.”