EOTC Incident Reporting

At St Joseph's School, we ensure that all EOTC-related incidents, near misses, and safety concerns raised by students, staff, and others are reported, reviewed, and followed up. This allows us to prevent future incidents and meet our obligations under the Education and Training Act 2020 and Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. See Recording and Reporting Accidents, Injuries, and Illness.

An incident is any situation where there was or may have been harm to people or damage to property (e.g. someone goes missing, theft or vandalism, injury, or death). It also includes situations where intervention was required to ensure safety. For serious incidents that impact the school community, we may need to implement our crisis management procedures. See Crisis Management.

Report

• We report incidents, including near misses and safety concerns in our injury and incident register.

  Schools can choose how they record injuries and illness including accidents, near misses, and notifiable events (e.g. injury and incident form, first aid log, accident register, SMS).

  For good practice, schools should record:

  • all first aid administered
  • accidents and near misses
  • investigation of incidents
  • notifiable events.

  Records should outline:

  • the names of all involved
  • the date and time of the incident
  • the cause (if known)
  • school response (e.g. first aid treatment)
  • any damage to school property.

  A near miss is an incident that didn't cause injury, illness, or damage but had the potential to. Near misses may be notifiable events – see Recording and Reporting Injuries and Illness.

• We notify WorkSafe in the case of a notifiable event – see Recording and Reporting Injuries and Illness.
• We report behaviour incidents through behaviour management and pastoral care procedures – see Behaviour Management and Supporting Student Wellbeing.

Review

• The EOTC coordinator, with relevant staff, reviews all reported incidents to identify any underlying causes.

Actions

• When a review identifies a risk or hazard that was not adequately controlled, we use our risk management process to identify appropriate controls for the future – see EOTC Risk Assessment and Management.
• Any changes to procedures are incorporated into our EOTC safety planning and risk assessment documentation – see Education Outside the Classroom (EOTC).
• The EOTC coordinator ensures that details of the incident and outcomes of the review are communicated, as appropriate, to the board, other staff, the school community, other schools, and any external providers as soon as practicable.
• We identify any further actions required (e.g. staff training, communications, reporting), including who will be responsible for ensuring these are completed.

Related policies

• EOTC Event Planning and Approval
• EOTC Health and First Aid
• Managing Traumatic Incidents
• Media and Publicity

Legislation

• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015
• Education and Training Act 2020

Resources

• WorkSafe | Mahi Haumaru Aotearoa: What events need to be notified?
• TKI | Te Kete Ipurangi: EOTC Guidelines (see chapter 7, "Emergency Preparedness")
• EONZ: EOTC Safety Management Plan and Toolkit (see EOTC Safety Management Plan template – "Incident Reporting Process")
• EONZ: EOTC Safety Management Plan and Toolkit (see relevant resources)
  • EOTC Incident Report

Release history: Term 1 2024, Term 1 2021, Term 1 2019,

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