HEALTH & SAFETY - EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP

Health and Safety with in a school is a priority for any principal and their board.  It should be a focal point at every board meeting and point of discussion regularly at staff level and community level.  

At Nga Iwi School we have a health and safety officer, a staff member who acts as an overseer/monitor of H&S practices across the school.  Twice a term, the board H&S committee meet to review systems, policies and procedures.  During these meetings, we reflect on the 'Health and Safety at Work Act 2015' document.  This document is a great guide for boards and a great way to inform best practice in school.  The checklists, questions and recommended actions were helpful in guiding our committee to implementing strong H&S  policies and procedures.  

The recent Ministry of Education 'Emergency Management Workshop' which was facilitated by Harrison Tew was a great workshop for consolidating our current policies and procedures.  Harrison Tew is an Emergency Planning company that supports schools in developing emergency plans for a variety of situations - lockdown, fire, flood, weather event, earthquake and many more.  We have them facilitate at our school biannually to check our systems and procedures, facilitate a lockdown and give us training on our lockdown procedures while in action.  We also do our own lockdowns without facilitation to practice any given lockdown situation at any given time.

The main takeaways I received from this workshop were more big picture understanding.  These notes I have taken back to our H&S team for discussion and action:

1. The board are the PCBU (Persons conducting the business undertaking) and are responsible for the H&S of ALL persons on site at all times.
2. The MoE have an EMOG team (Emergency Management Operations Group who are available to offer support should a lockdown occur at our schools.
3. The police will not take over the management of a school lockdown.  This is the responsibility of the school, the police will support where they can (dependent on the issue/situation causing the lockdown).
4. The MoE have a trauma team to assist with media coverage should media approach the school for comment.

In terms of advice moving forward, there are a host of things H&S committees need to be monitoring and maintaining throughout the year:

1. Communication with whanau (families) - notify and share emergency response plans with whanau and students at least twice a year.
2. Create a 'risk awareness' profile for your school.
3. Check emergencies policies for frequency of drills.
4. Check school media and social media policies.
5. Keep a list of websites that can help keep you informed during, particularly, a weather event i.e Auckland council emergency management page - hazard viewer, google maps, Metservice, etc.