EOTC Management and Support Roles
At St Joseph's School, the principal is responsible for the management of EOTC, which includes checking that planning, processes, and procedures are in place across all EOTC activities, and that these are current and followed correctly. The principal may delegate responsibilities and tasks to other school staff as appropriate. The principal and/or their delegate:
- provides safety leadership to foster and support a strong safety culture for all EOTC activities at our school
- ensures that school EOTC policies and procedures give effect to other school policies and procedures, as relevant (e.g. health and safety, child protection, inclusive school culture, privacy)
- monitors school EOTC policies and procedures to check that what is stated is actually occurring in practice, and carries out regular reviews to ensure systems are current.
EOTC coordinator
At St Joseph's School, the principal fulfils the role of EOTC coordinator.
The EOTC coordinator is familiar with EOTC good practice and legal requirements (e.g. Ministry of Education EOTC Guidelines). They have full overview of EOTC in our school and perform a range of tasks, including:
- facilitating staff understanding of our EOTC policies and procedures (and related policies and procedures) and the requirements of various EOTC roles and responsibilities
- coordinating clear procedures/processes for emergency response situations and recording and reporting incidents (including near misses)
- monitoring any deviations from EOTC planning and/or approval processes, including how the deviation was managed and reported to the principal/board, and ensuring this is recorded
- reporting to the board on our EOTC programme (including reviews), and communicating any changes to our EOTC policies and procedures to staff.
The EOTC coordinator ensures that:
- all EOTC activities align with our school vision and curriculum
- the competence and suitability (i.e. to work with young people) of everyone involved in EOTC is checked
- EOTC experiences are inclusive and equitable for all students, including using support plans where appropriate
- EOTC events and our safety management planning/systems are reviewed (which may include
external review) The Ministry of Education EOTC Guidelines 2016 state that professional outdoor organisations, government agencies, and national organisations can help schools review the safety of their programmes or activities, as well as help with EOTC queries, resources, and training. See the contacts in Appendix 3.
If a school experiences a serious incident, it should also consider seeking external review of its safety management system. EONZ offers direct support for schools – see Tailored EOTC Review and Support 
.
- all external providers used for EOTC meet good practice criteria, and a registered adventure activity provider is used where there is outside provision of an adventure activity (as defined by the Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Regulations 2016).
For resources to support the EOTC coordinator role, see EOTC Coordinator's Toolkit – EOTC Safety Management Plan and Toolkit .
Support roles
Our EOTC coordinator may work with a range of supporting roles for individual EOTC events. Each EOTC event/activity may require a range of roles to run the activity safely and meet our supervision requirements. These include:
Person in charge (PIC) of the EOTC activity
The PIC oversees, manages, and responds to any situations that affect the whole group. The PIC may be a teacher, and if an external provider is involved, there may likely be two PICs (one representing the school and one representing the external provider).
EOTC activity leader
EOTC activity leaders work under the PIC, and may include teachers, coaches, adult volunteers, other adults, external providers (e.g. instructors), or tertiary/senior students.
EOTC assistants and volunteers
EOTC assistants may include teachers, support staff, adult volunteers, tertiary students, or senior students (as appropriate) that help with the EOTC activity but do not necessarily have the required competence to fulfil the activity leader role.
Depending on the activity, St Joseph's School may require volunteers to complete specific forms before participating in the EOTC activity.
For more information, see EOTC Supervision.
Related policies
Legislation
- Health and Safety at Work Act 2015
- Education and Training Act 2020
Resources
: Term 1 2024, Term 1 2019
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