HEALTH & SAFETY
From compliance to culture: rethinking school health and safety in 2026
escalated.
As expectations around safeguarding, staff wellbeing and governance continue to rise, these gaps are attracting greater scrutiny. Inspectors are increasingly interested not only in whether systems exist, but whether they are working in practice. For school leaders, that means understanding where problems typically occur and how to address them before they escalate into incidents.
At its core, effective health and safety management in education should be sensible and proportionate. The goal is not to generate more paperwork, but to focus on the real risks that could cause harm to staff, pupils or visitors. When leadership teams concentrate on those risks and ensure controls are embedded in everyday practice, compliance tends to follow.
M
aria Leonard, Regional Health & Safety Manager at WorkNest, shares her insights with Education Today. Health and safety failures in schools rarely happen because of a single mistake. More often, they stem from predictable gaps in leadership oversight, risk management, and follow-through – a risk assessment is completed but not reviewed, an action is recorded but not implemented, or a concern is raised but not
Where things go wrong
Across inspections, incident investigations and enforcement cases, the same weaknesses tend to appear repeatedly in education settings. One of the most common is risk assessments that are technically present but practically ineffective. In some cases, they are generic documents that do not reflect the specific layout of the site, the needs of pupils, or the activities taking place. In others, they have not been
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reviewed for years despite changes in staffing, buildings or curriculum delivery. Fire safety is another area where gaps frequently emerge. Schools may have a current fire risk assessment, but actions identified within it are not always implemented or tracked. Inspectors increasingly expect to see evidence that recommendations have been addressed and that evacuation procedures are regularly rehearsed.
Staff wellbeing is also moving higher up the health and safety agenda. Stress, violence and aggression towards staff are sometimes viewed primarily as HR or behavioural issues rather than risks that require formal health and safety assessment and control.
Near misses present another blind spot. In many schools, incidents that could have caused harm are not consistently reported or analysed. Without this early warning information, leadership teams may miss patterns that signal a developing problem.
Finally, some schools struggle with clarity around responsibility. Health and safety is often described as ‘everyone’s responsibility’, but without clearly defined duty holders and competent persons, accountability can become blurred.
These issues often remain hidden until an April 2026
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