Victorian Auditor-General’s report
4 May 2011

Managing Student Safety 
Audit summary
The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) is responsible for providing a safe, secure and stimulating learning environment for about 530 000 students at 1 559 government schools. The responsibility is managed by DEECD’s central and regional offices and individual schools.
Legislation, standards and policies detail student safety requirements for government schools. The Education and Training Reform Act 2006 and associated regulations require all schools to meet minimum safety standards. The Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 requires schools to provide healthy and safe work environments and to protect students to the highest level against risks to their health and safety.
Any safety incident involving or injuring a student is undesirable and the impacts of assaults, accidents, bullying, etc., on an individual and their family can be traumatic. From this perspective, no incident can be considered ‘acceptable’. However, with a student population of over 530 000, it is inevitable that some students will be injured or involved in undesirable incidents. On average there are about 14 student safety incidents a day and about 167 students are injured in school a day across 1 559 schools.
To know whether students are safe, DEECD needs to understand not only where, why, and what incidents and injuries are occurring, but also set acceptable numbers and degrees of severity for incidents and injuries.
The audit examined whether DEECD had provided students in government schools with a safe environment where the risk of harm is minimised and students feel physically and emotionally secure. In particular the audit examined whether the severity and frequency of safety incidents is in line with DEECD expectations, whether schools could demonstrate they were appropriately managing risks and whether DEECD was offering appropriate guidance and support. 
To determine how safe students are in schools the audit examined data on student safety incidents; injuries to students; student opinions; and injury and accident claims.
Conclusion
The continuing low incidence of both safety incidents over the three-year period to 2009, and injuries to students over a six-year period to 2009 indicates that, overall, students are safe in schools. This is supported by students self reporting over this period that they feel safe.
There are positive trends in the number of injuries to students and the most serious types of safety incidents, such as sexual assault, which are falling. However, it is concerning that the total number of safety incidents are increasing as are playground injuries. 
It is also concerning that DEECD is not well placed to determine if there are school level or systemic issues that need to be addressed. This is because DEECD does not undertake appropriate quality checking of the safety data, and has not established benchmarks or standards against which to judge the significance of trends in safety events. 
At the school level, principals need more support with applying DEECD’s safety policies. They are particularly concerned about their ability to deal effectively with traffic safety and the emerging cybersafety threat.
Findings
Severity and frequency of student safety incidents
Safety data reported by schools shows that at 3 077 in 2009, or one incident for every 172 students, the number of incidents is low and has remained so. 
The most serious student safety incidents, such as alleged assault and sexual assault, have fallen by 26 per cent—one incident a day in 2009 from 1.3 a day in 2007. However, potentially less serious student safety incidents such as harassment and slips, trips and falls have risen by 45 per cent—13.3 incidents a day in 2009 from 9.2 a day in 2007.
Rates of students injured at school are low and have fallen by 34 per cent over the six‑year period to 2009, with most injuries being relatively minor and needing only first aid treatment. The number of students claiming compensation from DEECD for injuries or accidents at school has also fallen significantly. 
Students injured at school and on school activities can seek compensation from DEECD. Students made 50 per cent fewer claims for personal injury or accident in 2009 compared with 2000. Over the five years to 2009, of the 339 claims against DEECD, 104 were successful with an average payout of $45 700. While this also points to there being fewer injuries in government schools, it may also reflect the effect of amendments to the Wrongs Act 1958 which raised the baseline for the severity of injury for which a claim could be made.
Student perceptions of their safety at school
Most students believe that they are safe from harm in school. Across five separate indicators, with a score of five being the most positive, student responses averaged above four out of five. Student safety scores for all indicators in 2009 were also more positive about the safety of their school than student scores from 2006.
Monitoring school performance
The effectiveness of DEECD’s monitoring of student safety is limited by its lack of both quality assurance over safety data, and the rigour over school self-assessments of their compliance with safety requirements. DEECD has also not established its expectations in terms of benchmarks or standards to analyse safety data.
Quality assurance
DEECD’s main systems for recording and reporting student safety data are the Incident Reporting Information System (IRIS) for student safety incidents and CASES21 for injury and accident data. 
The data collection systems and processes overlap and DEECD exercises only limited control over the completeness and accuracy of the data entered by schools. For example, IRIS data shows that 430 schools reported no incidents in 2009. Similarly, 247 schools recorded no student injuries on CASES21 in 2009. DEECD had not verified either of these results.
Some information is duplicated across the two systems causing confusion for principals about what to report where. For example, student injuries that require treatment by a medical professional must be recorded on CASES21 and reported to DEECD’s Emergency Management and Security Unit to be recorded on IRIS. In 2009, more injuries of this type were recorded on CASES21 (3 879) than the total incidents on IRIS (3 077). Such duplication and the lack of quality assurance by DEECD raise doubts about the completeness and accuracy of reporting.
School self-assessments
Schools fill in the DEECD School Compliance Checklist (SCC) to self assess that they meet the minimum student safety standards for registration. However, DEECD has no rigorous assurance about the reliability of the self-assessments. This limits how it can use the SCC to focus resources and guidance to improve school performance.
Benchmarks or standards
DEECD also has not defined an acceptable number or frequency of safety incidents based on nature and severity. As a result it has no reference point or standard to calibrate:
·	how well schools manage student safety risks and their risk exposure 
·	trends in safety incidents to inform decisions about when to intervene and when to assess the effectiveness of programs and strategies 
·	how to continuously improve safety and what that looks like.
How schools manage student safety
School principals are directly responsible for managing student safety in their school including managing risks such as student behaviour, traffic management and cybersafety, and complying with occupational health and safety requirements.
DEECD supports schools with policies and guidelines based on, and referenced to, legislative and industry safety standards. These are supported by the Victorian Government Schools Reference Guide which comprehensively addresses student safety. DEECD regularly reviews and updates key student safety policies and guidelines.
Sixty-five per cent of principals said they felt well supported by DEECD in managing student safety, 28 per cent said that support was poor and 7 per cent very poor.
Risk management
On the whole school principals said they manage risk in line with DEECD policies and guidelines although there were gaps in principals’ understanding of risk management and how to manage student safety.
DEECD guides and trains new principals on risk management but the training is not well structured and does not extend to how to identify and manage risks. Eighty‑five per cent of principals said they would benefit from further risk management training, while over 90 per cent thought their staff would also benefit.
While most principals felt comfortable identifying risks and deciding what to do about known risks, fewer felt that their reviews of how they manage risk were adequate. More than a third of principals said they did not regularly monitor and improve school safety processes, which shows a lack of systematic review by principals.
Managing major safety risks
DEECD and schools see traffic safety as a significant risk. However, principals are limited in what they can do to improve traffic safety. They expressed frustration with processes that involve third party agencies such as the Department of Transport and local councils, and believed that DEECD’s regional offices could do more to support them.
Three-quarters of principals surveyed identified cybersafety, including cyberbullying, as an emerging or increasing risk. DEECD provides extensive, regularly updated information on cybersafety, but has not clearly defined a preferred approach for dealing with cyberbullying. 
Principals have tried to engage students and their parents on the issue, but they have found it difficult to engage parents. Schools have made little use of their websites to engage parents in cybersafety and while DEECD’s website contains extensive information it is not easy to find and the volume can be overwhelming.
DEECD has up-to-date, detailed guidance on best practice in behaviour management and requires every school to have a student engagement policy in line with it. 
At the time of the audit, DEECD had assessed the quality and appropriateness of student engagement policies for over 60 per cent of its schools. It found that 81 per cent fully complied, 18 per cent partially complied and 1 per cent did not comply. DEECD is working with schools to address the non-compliance.
During 2009, DEECD released a new Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management system to standardise practice and improve workplace safety, including in schools. At the time of the audit regional experts had visited about 1 000 schools to introduce and explain the new system. All schools are expected to have the system by June 2011, after which regional experts will revisit them over the next seven years for a review.
At December 2010, only 60 per cent of principals had assessed their schools against DEECD OHS risk management requirements. Of the 932 principals that completed the assessment, only 60 per cent assessed their school as fully compliant. 
Recommendations
Number	Recommendation	Page	
The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development should:	
1.	identify the practical training needs of principals and staff in risk management standards, methods and practices, and provide that training	28	
2.	continue to develop its understanding of cybersafety issues in schools, disseminate clear guidance for schools on the best approach to dealing with cybersafety, and support it with training	28	
3.	promptly follow-up the reasons for school non-compliance with School Compliance Checklist requirements and redress	28	
4.	assure the reliability of school safety data by:
·	improving data consistency by clarifying what needs to be reported, when, where and why
·	minimising duplication across the IRIS and CASES21 systems to improve the quality of the data, the efficiency of recording and reporting, and to reduce administration for principals and staff	35	
5.	regularly monitor and analyse data to make best use of the information from schools	35	
6.	establish incident and injury targets and benchmarks to enable assessment of school performance	35	
7.	develop its Schools Compliance Checklist verification program to include a full and detailed audit program, and implement that program.	35	
Submissions and comments received
In addition to progressive engagement during the course of the audit, in accordance with section 16(3) of the Audit Act 1994 a copy of this report was provided to the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development with a request for submissions or comments.
Agency views have been considered in reaching our audit conclusions and are represented to the extent relevant and warranted in preparing this report. Their full section 16(3) submissions and comments however, are included in Appendix A.