Beyond the permission slip: How boards can govern outdoor learning safely

When a student from Whangārei Boys’ High School drowned on a school trip in 2023, it sent shockwaves through the education sector. Three years earlier, a similar tragedy occurred at Melville High School in Hamilton. Both incidents triggered investigations by WorkSafe and the Ministry of Education – and in both cases, Education Outdoors New Zealand (EONZ) stepped in to support the schools and boards involved.

“We’ll support an internal review if that’s what they need,” says Fiona McDonald, Chief Executive of EONZ. “Then we work with the board to identify what’s missing and deliver professional development to lift capability. There’s always something that allowed the incident to happen – some gap – and that’s where we focus.”

Those gaps often trace back to governance. Since 2000, an estimated 23 people – students and staff – have lost their lives during education outside the classroom (EOTC) activities. “There’s really no new incident,” says McDonald. “They’ve all happened before, just in slightly different forms. The problem is we haven’t paid attention.”

In McDonald’s view, good governance in this space begins with clarity of role. The board is not there to approve trips or inspect helmets. It’s there to set expectations, understand risk and seek meaningful assurance that the school has the right systems in place – and that those systems are current, applied consistently and regularly reviewed.

That distinction between governance and operations is often blurred, particularly in the school sector, where many board members arrive with no governance background and limited exposure to health and safety.

At a strategic level, the board should be asking how EOTC risks are identified and classified, what ‘high risk’ means in the school’s context, and whether the staff involved in leading activities are both competent and supported.

It should be clear who makes operational decisions, how weather warnings are managed, and what professional development is in place for the people doing the work. These are governance questions, not management tasks – and they’re the kinds of questions that help prevent tragedies.

For board members unfamiliar with this territory, capability building is essential. The IoD offers targeted courses in health and safety governance – including a half-day introductory programme for those new to the space, and a more advanced, self-paced online course for directors in high-risk sectors.

A supporting board pack enables practical boardroom conversations, including questions to ask, sample reporting formats and guidance on effective assurance. All are tailored to help boards move beyond compliance and into genuine oversight.

McDonald sees strong alignment between this kind of approach and the EONZ guidance developed for schools. One tool she points to is a set of 15 governance-level questions, designed to be asked gradually across a three-year board cycle. Each is mapped to legal obligations and paired with examples of the kinds of evidence a principal might provide. It’s not about creating more paperwork, she says – it’s about knowing what to ask and how to interpret the answers.

This governance focus also responds to broader systemic issues. The revised Ministry of Education EOTC guidelines, released this year, include significant updates to safety management templates. Boards should already have seen evidence that their schools have reviewed their EOTC systems in light of those changes. If not, McDonald warns, that will be a gap WorkSafe is likely to question.

Other shifts are also under way. Sector qualifications are being developed for EOTC leaders and coordinators. Operational limits – such as rules that cancel an activity automatically when certain weather warnings are in place – have been built into planning tools to remove pressure from day-of-decision-making.

Meanwhile, commercial software systems are proliferating, some of which remain out of step with New Zealand’s current safety guidance. One example, still common in offshore systems, is the use of fixed adult–student ratios, which McDonald says were a factor in early fatalities and have long since been phased out locally.

For school boards, that raises another level of responsibility: procurement. “Boards need to be really mindful about what they’re buying and whether the system supports, rather than undermines, good practice,” she says.

The same applies to managing relationships with external providers. Whether it’s a chartered bus or a remote campsite, boards have a duty to ensure the same health and safety expectations apply. “If you’re sending your staff to a school camp on someone else’s place, it’s exactly the same as a building site. You have the same responsibilities.”

At the heart of it all is a simple starting point: read the guidelines. The 2025 EOTC update, produced with input from EONZ and the New Zealand School Boards Association, includes a dedicated governance section, references to health and safety law, and practical examples of oversight in action. McDonald calls it compulsory reading for new board members. “They can’t be prosecuted individually,” she says, “but they have organisational and moral responsibility.”

She’s also clear about where things go wrong. Often, the school’s EOTC system is outdated. Staff are under-trained and under-resourced. Board conversations are either absent or happening at the wrong level. And when something does go wrong, it’s often because the early warning signs were never recognised – or worse, never asked for.

“We want paperwork to support, not prevent, getting outside,” says McDonald. “The goal is to create a culture of confident, safe EOTC – not fearful avoidance.”

Ultimately, it’s not about the trip. It’s about the system – and the system belongs to the board.

As part of the IoD’s commitment to building governance capability across all sectors, we have established a School whole board membership offer to help support the work of school boards. The offer includes a 33% preferential rate on each board member’s annual subscription with no join fee. This offer is available until 31 December 2025, and boards that sign up during this period will retain the preferential rate for the duration of their tenure with the IoD.