As part of preparing for your overnight camp, you will want to put together a risk assessment that considers practical risks for staying on your school site overnight, as well considering any specific safeguarding concerns.

You know your site and your students far better than us, so we’ve put together the following guidance to help you create your own risk assessment. Of course, this guidance is not exhaustive and specific considerations will vary from site to site. It’s also important to remember that it is not possible to create a risk assessment that addresses all possible eventualities – particularly when doing an activity for the first time. You will need to ensure that you plan for a flexible approach that allows the risk assessment to be added to or modified if it becomes necessary over the course of a camp.

As with all risk assessments, you’ll want to consider the benefits of the experience. Noting down what you expect the children to gain from their camp can be very worthwhile.

Contents

Risk Assessment Checklist

At the end of this page, you’ll find a checklist to make sure you’ve included the information from this page in your risk assessment.

Parents and Guardians

It’s very important that parents and guardians receive guidance about what the camp involves and a kit list. All of this can be found on our Information for Parents and Guardians page. A printable version of the information and kit list can be found on the same page.

You’ll need to make sure you have consent forms, medical, and dietary information for all the children taking part in the camp. Most of our schools use their standard “consent for school trips and other off-site activities” form, or own form can be found on our Information and Downloads page.

Paperwork

Our Information and Downloads page has a wide range of important and useful documents for you, including:

• Our Camping Information Pack for schools

• Our risk assessments for camping and activities

• Our insurance documents

• Consent forms

• Links to our safeguarding and inclusion policies

• Our Tent List to help you group the young people overnight

• Our Council for Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge

Talk to us

We are always available to support you and have a lot of experience running our camps. If you have a specific question, or need to talk to us about supporting a child with additional needs, please let us know.

DBS

Around 60 days before your camp, we will send you an email containing your programme and any other information you need. At the bottom of this email, you will find DBS information for all of the team we expect to be working on the camp. We will update you if this changes and will also have photocopies with us. While we ask our team to travel with original copies of their photo ID and DBS certificates, outdoors instructors live quite a mobile life and things can be missed, so we advise using the copies we send in advance if possible.

Arrival

When we arrive, we’ll make sure you let us know about any site-specific hazards or policies we should be aware of and make a record of all of the information we need about your pupils’ medical concerns, dietary requirements, and special educational needs. Our experienced team will also be conducting an ongoing dynamic risk assessment of your site and we’ll let you know straight away if we have any specific concerns that need your attention.

Night Watch

The Outdoors People can provide an experienced and first aid trained Night Watch person who remains awake all night if you want extra support with pastoral care, or have concerns about site security.

You can find our risk assessments for camping and activities on our Information and Downloads page. These cover all of the things that are our responsibility and allow you to focus on considerations around your site and students.

To keep everyone safe, our policies ask for sole use of your field for the entire period that our staff are on-site, though exceptions may be made for particularly large fields. Ball games in particular shouldn’t take place anywhere near our tents or activities.

During the day, your existing risk assessments for PE and similar physical activities should cover many eventualities. Your school’s normal site access and safeguarding policies will also be in effect and won’t usually need changed for your camp. You can also look at any existing risk assessments you have in place for school sports days and other events that take place on your field.

Overnight, your existing risk assessments for off-site residentials make a great starting place – as does any guidance for staff-to-pupil ratios provided by your governing bodies. These can then be adjusted depending on your site and students.

Staff Ratios

During the day, you can expect us to provide at least one trained instructor for every 17 children during activities. Your team are also welcome to take part but you may want to schedule some breaks!

We ask you to provide us with some extra support while putting up and taking down the tents and ask you to supervise the children during breaks and meal times. We can provide additional staff to help you with this if you wish.

Our trained staff team will head to their tents at around 9 pm so that they are ready to deliver activities the next day. Your Camp Director is on-call all night if there is a problem with the camp.

Overnight, your existing risk assessments for off-site residentials make a great starting place – as does any guidance for staff-to-pupil ratios provided by your governing bodies. These can then be adjusted depending on your site and students. The Outdoors People can provide an experienced and first aid trained Night Watch person who remains awake all night if you want extra support with pastoral care, or have concerns about site security.

Teachers already work very hard and remaining in contact with the children for 24 hours or more is unquestionably going to be tiring. Tired staff make mistakes, can have stronger emotional responses, and may be at more risk when driving home after the camp.

While we ask to always have support from school staff immediately available, we certainly don’t expect you to be working directly with the children at all times! Particularly on day two, it’s normal for school staff to be taking a break in a visible location while our team run activities.

Our own team take a breather during break and meal times. We’ll liaise with you when designing your programme and can usually make sure your camp closely follows your normal school day so that the campers can join the rest of the school during these times.

Many schools find that establishing a shift pattern in the evening and overnight can give your team members a break and allow them to get more sleep. Because we’re on school grounds, staff who might not normally be able to support an off-site residential may be able to come in for an hour or two while their colleagues rest, which will give you much more flexibility.

When writing other parts of your risk assessment, consider the impact of your policies on how much sleep your team members will get. If the children have to wake you when going to the bathroom, you are unlikely to get much sleep so a rota of who is in the “getting woken up tent” – with other staff members sleeping further away – can make a big difference!

Changing Facilities

You will want to consider changing facilities for the children. We generally advise that most belongings are kept in the school building and children get changed inside. Most schools find this much easier to facilitate practically and it means the young people aren’t changing in a tent where another child may unexpectedly open a door or window.

Intruders

During the day, your normal policies for site access are already tried and tested. Overnight, these will make a good starting point but you will also want to consider how physically secure your site is and if your site borders publicly accessible or high traffic areas.

Unless you have booked our Night Watch, none of The Outdoors People staff are normally working overnight, but it is not uncommon for schools to ask us to put our personal tents in a place which helps limit access to the school field. We recommend talking to us in advance about this as some of our team who live near your school may be planning on going home overnight.

Your risk assessment will need to include what steps you will take if it is suspected someone who shouldn’t be is onsite. These might include:

• How many people will investigate?

• What form will an investigation take and what circumstances will indicate for an “all clear”?

• At what stage will you ask for support from your Camp Director?

• At what stage will the police be called?

• What steps will you take to count the children?

• At what stage will you move to full lockdown and what will that look like (shelter in place, move into the school building, etc)?

Bathroom Trips

Your children are probably already very familiar with the areas of the site we will be using and a torch is on the packing list. If the bathrooms aren’t far from the camping area, most schools find that asking the children to go to the bathroom in pairs works very well and ensures school staff get more rest. We recommend walking the route the children will be taking to the bathroom – in low light conditions if possible – and then deciding if having an adult escort is the best approach.

Of course, safeguarding policies serve to both protect vulnerable people and to protect school staff and other leaders from misunderstandings. If your site requires a bathroom escort, you will want to consider how far that staff member should accompany a child and if they will be sufficiently visible or away for a short enough time that it wouldn’t raise additional concerns.

“Portaloos”

Some of our schools choose to rent “Portaloos” from local providers if accessing the school building will be tricky. These are an excellent solution but you will need to consider:

• Site access for their vehicle.

• Overnight lighting of the toilet interior.

• At most locations, it’s important to have the toilets delivered on the day of your camp. Unattended “Portaloos” make a tempting target for mischief makers and vandals which can leave you with no usable facilities.

• “Portaloo” doors can be quite loud, consider using a small bit of foam – duck taped in place – to reduce the noise overnight.

• You will want to keep the number of loos you hire low due to cost reasons, but this can result in long queues which can impact the camp or cause “accidents”. Look at how many toilets the children normally have access to during the day and what the turnaround time is for everyone going to the toilet during break times.

• You will need to consider what facilities adults – including our team – will be using.

We strongly advise against “toilet tents”. These are designed for family groups of 6 to 8 and don’t have the capacity for even a small class of children (plus teachers and leaders). These facilities are very unpleasant should they overflow, particularly in the dark when it may not be noticed until too late!

Social Media

Parents and schools often make use of social media to talk about their camps. You may want to ask everyone to wait until the morning so that they are not “advertising” the overnight camping.

Medication

You’ll want to consider where to keep medication during the camp that is both secure and accessible. Teachers tents can be a good location but remember that the tents will be taken down before the end of the camp! Your team will need breaks or may be called away, so make sure that multiple staff members know where the medication is and how to find the correct items if required. It may be appropriate to produce individualised overnight risk assessments for some children with additional needs.

Bed Wetting

Particularly with younger children, bed wetting can be a consideration. We will provide you with additional sleeping mats but it is sensible to have some backup bedding available and consider how you will handle this to minimise embarrassment. If you need to swap a sleeping mat, please put the soiled one to one side so that we can properly clean and sterilise it.

First Aid

All our Camp Directors and Night Watch staff hold current first aid certificates, as do many of our other team members. A full-size, waterproofed first aid kit lives next to one of the teachers’ tents throughout the camp, and smaller kits travel with any of our activities that might present additional risks (such as firelighting). While they not working overnight, our Camp Directors are on-call for emergencies at all times.

In practice, many first aid incidents are dealt with by schools without our involvement – particularly if an injury happens during free time. During the day, your normal procedures for PE should work well but we recommend making sure you have a designated first aider outside of school hours and overnight. Overnight, you can book our Night Watch staff to provide this cover and they will confirm what duties you would like them to undertake when they arrive.

If your site’s first aid risk assessment includes access to a portable defibrillator, you will need to make sure that it is still accessible overnight.

Adults

Remember to include any medical conditions your adult team members might have in your risk assessments. If they are prescribed any form of “rescue” medication that they may need in a hurry, you will want to make sure that other members of your team know where that is. If they have a spare, it may be appropriate to keep it with the children’s medication in a central location.

Weather

Our camps are all weather… almost! We provide shelters for most activities – which give both rain protection and shade – and will adjust our programmes around the conditions to ensure everyone has the best time possible.

With the children outside all day on our camps, it’s important that to make sure that they can reapply their sunscreen regularly, have access to sun hats and sun glasses, and have plenty of water or juice. The Outdoors People’s risk assessment and insurance allows us to issue hypoallergenic suncream to children unless you, or parents or guardians, ask us not to. The Sun Safe Schools campaign can help you create a Sun Safety Policy for your school that includes giving out suncream if needed.

Our Parents and Guardians page includes a kit list and we can provide good quality sleeping bags – for the children or school to keep – at “trade” price. We do ask for around 60 days’ advance notice if you are wanting to order sleeping bags to allow time for shipping and for alternative arrangements to be made should our main supplier have low stock.

Our tents are extremely weatherproof but severe conditions do occasionally force a change of plans. Though we only need to retreat inside rarely, summer thunderstorms are a particular concern. You will need to make sure you have designated an area of the school for a “sleep over” in case of poor weather and have risk assessed this location for safe evacuation routes in low light conditions. School fire alarm systems are not usually designed for the site to be used as “accommodation” and having someone remain awake may be appropriate. Should the school building not be suitable, having the children return home is often a workable alternative – particularly as these kinds of severe conditions are very rare.

Site Access

You will need to make sure we can bring our vehicles onto the field, or schedule a chat with us if this won’t be an option as our team needs to be able to safely and securely move our activity and safety equipment around. If field access for vehicles isn’t an option, you’ll want to consider how this might affect emergency service vehicles.

Lights, alarms, and security firms

You will want to review your standard site and premises risk assessments with consideration for low-light conditions and a reduced staff presence within the school building. We recommend walking the routes the children will take to reach the bathroom overnight – both in daylight and in low light conditions if possible.

You’ll need to find out if your exterior lights normally turn off at a certain time in the evening and decide if you’ll want to override some or all of those so that they remain on longer or all night. Tool hire companies can often rent out flood lighting or one of your parents or guardians may have some they can loan you.

Your buildings intruder alarms probably turn on at a certain time, or when all the staff have gone home. These may need partly or entirely disabled if people need to access the main building overnight so you will want to plan for this.

If your school contracts with any kind of private security provider, you will want to make sure they are notified about the event.

Evacuation

You will need to plan what an evacuation of the camping area might look like. Often, this will be very similar to your normal fire drill procedures, but you will need to consider low light conditions and what will happen if a situation is severe enough that we need to leave the school site during the night. You will also need to consider if any of your pupils or accompanying adults may need some additional help during an evacuation.

Emergency Services

The site and buildings will of course be secured overnight. You will need to make sure you can reliably and quickly grant access to the emergency services if required, as well as having a plan for evacuating the site if needed. Our reflective fire extinguisher box lives next to the teachers’ tent throughout the camp and can be a good central location for storing keys.

You’ll want to notify the local police that the event is taking place so that they aren’t concerned about us camping on the field. They may also be able to provide additional patrols near your school for the night of the event.

The fire service should also be notified. They may want to see your evacuation plans and might want to know what steps they’ll need to take to access the site in an emergency.

Kit Checks

When the children arrive at school, it can be worth doing a quick kit check with them, or with their parents or guardians. Key items would be:

We suggest having a quick chat with your insurer to make sure they’re happy. Our insurance covers all risks relating to our activities, equipment, vehicles and staff – including the risk of damage to your site – and you can find our insurance paperwork on our Information and Downloads page at anytime. Your insurance already covers you for activities on your school field – such as school sports days – so you should just need to make sure that your underwriter is happy with your control measures for any unusual risks, such as sleeping in the school building in poor weather or the risk of nighttime intruders.

Involving the Children

One of the best ways of ensuring lasting impact from any residential experience is to build what the children learn and experience into your school life. Learning how to manage risk and an understanding of how to balance a risk with the rewards of an activity are very important life skills, so this makes for an excellent guided classroom lesson before a camp. Involving the children in the risk assessment process can also improve buy in if you expect to have a control measure that will be inconvenient for the children – such as an off-limits area of your site or a “buddy system” for going to the bathrooms during the night.

Children have active imaginations so it’s important to guide the topics discussed using the same kind of subject headings as will be in your official document. You might want to avoid some topics to avoid scaring more nervous campers.