St Columba Anglican School is an independent, co-ed K-12 school in Port Macquarie, NSW with 1200 students and 150 staff.
Whilst COVID-19 has seen an end to camps and the almost daily routine of buses taking kids on excursions within and beyond Port Macquarie, St Columba is actively doing numerous incursions and local excursions - like local school sport with venues that have COVID-safe plans.
The school uses SafeExcursions for all excursions and incursions that include risk (like Science Week), and using SafeExcursions is standard practice by 95% of staff, including all teachers.
Most like the tick-box process to work through and most haven’t needed help after one training session.
which saves them time, yet it still takes them through a risk assessment process to create correct risk assessments for each excursion.
because everything is online and paperless, they can find information at any time.
the process and the end result are the same for everyone. Some teachers had been doing too much and some the bare minimum. Now excursion planning and risk assessments are consistent throughout the school.
SafeExcursions makes it clear on what needs to be done. It covers what teachers need to consider and what administrators and approvers must know. It’s all-encompassing.
because it’s online, status can easily be checked, information is easily found and archived. It’s easy to look at excursion and incursion plans and risk assessments for other events and see a full picture of everything that is happening at the school.
by considering every aspect of an excursion or incursion plan and risk, teachers and approvers have a more complete awareness of the responsibility they have for events, which raises the school’s confidence that everything has been considered.
the SafeExcursions team have been very open to suggestions and responsive to our requests. We feel listened to.
The principal is very supportive because they want to know that risk is being done properly and kids are kept safe.
“SafeExcursions has brought consistency and confidence to the school and put an end to paper chasing.”
Janene Rikamanis,
Risk and Compliance Administrator, St Columba Anglican School.