, Director - Health, Safety and Security, Ministry of Education

Intro: What comes to mind when you think health and safety for education? Is it the 2,700 staff at the Ministry of Education? How about the 2,500 schools and 5,000 early learning services? Or perhaps the 20,000+ Officers, 100,000+ Workers or the over 1,000,000 Others that make up this sector?

We at the Ministry of Education have taken up the challenge to lead the education sector through our stewardship model. We are using this model to help transform this huge and complex sector through health and safety best practice.

To help us understand what best practice means for this sector we established a health and safety Sector Reference Group made up of principal’s associations, unions and key stakeholders. We worked side by side with this group and utilised their feedback to influence our programme of work. We also talked to Principals and Boards of Trustees throughout the country. Why? We wanted to get it as right as we could, the first time, for the sector.

We also wanted to build our stewardship model to last and to be continually refreshed by dialogue with those who are leading health and safety culture throughout the sector.

This session will focus on how we did this

• What exactly ARE the consequences of the new health and safety legislation on schools? 
• Lessons learned, questions asked 
• Over 50 forums and spoken to over 1900 school principals and board chairs 
• Our key resources and associated tools