Education solutions

Delivering tailored solutions for the education community.

Education risk management

Navigating health, fire, and security regulations presents a complex challenge for many organisations, especially schools. Protecting your school and its essential assets is fundamental to its long-term sustainability.

Why choose us?

With nearly 60 years of experience, Howden is dedicated to delivering tailored solutions for the global education community. Beyond offering customised commercial insurance, we empower schools to manage risk while ensuring compliance with all relevant legislation.

Benefits of managing risk

Enhanced morale

Safety in schools should be viewed as an opportunity for creativity and growth. By creating a safe environment for students and staff, you can significantly boost morale, resulting in less staff sickness, fewer incidents and minimised disruption to learning.

Legal responsibilities

Schools have a legal duty to ensure a safe, supportive environment for students, staff, visitors, and contractors. This duty underpins effective risk management, requiring schools to safeguard, as far as reasonably practicable, everyone’s health and safety on campus.

Financial and reputational protection

A structured approach to managing your risks helps provide appropriate risk transfer solutions balanced against premium payments. It also helps prevent costly accidents, operational disruptions, and damage to your school’s reputation.

Avoiding negligence

Insufficient risk management can create perceptions of negligence and carelessness, potentially damaging trust and reputation. By adopting robust risk management practices, schools can instill confidence in parents, teachers and authorities.

How can we help?

Howden is dedicated to delivering tailored solutions for the global education community.

Howden’s risk management model

Stage 1: Define and understand your risk

We work with you to help understand the risks which are impacting your people, operations and finances, so your organisation can understand the areas of highest priority and those that will have the largest impact.

Stage 2: Prevent and protect you from risk

We work with you to develop internal capability and solutions to address risk areas, then we'll develop, refine and implement new policies and procedures that address the issues and create sustainable solutions.

Stage 3: Support and manage risk

We focus on risk management and supporting your team to monitor and assess the effectiveness of risk controls and procedures. We also offer change management, crisis management, injury management and broader employee benefit programs.

Protect your people

Howden helps schools manage risk and compliance with expert services including Safety Gap Analysis, public liability assessments, and psychosocial risk management aligned with Australian legislation. We also offer tailored employee benefits programs, WHS due diligence training, return-to-work solutions, and Student Personal Accident cover - ensuring safer campuses, stronger staff wellbeing, and comprehensive protection for your school community.

Howden provides schools with a thorough understanding of their risk exposure through our extensive Safety Gap Analysis. Using our 11-pillar review framework, we critically assess key areas of safety and risk. This structured analysis identifies areas for improvement, allowing schools to implement robust policies, procedures, and risk controls for effective, ongoing management. Additionally, our public liability assessments support schools in meeting their duty of care obligations, ensuring a safe environment for all students, staff, visitors, and contractors on campus.

Across each State in Australia, new legislation, regulations or codes of practice are now in place requiring all Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBUs) to address psychosocial hazards at work. We help schools manage this, whilst also protecting their people via psychosocial hazards assessment and risk profiling, and through to controls that mitigate the risk of illness and injury.

An effective Employee Benefits program helps schools attract and retain staff, whilst also increasing productivity, and supporting wealth protection. We can complete a health check of your existing benefits programs or design a bespoke solution for your school.

Howden have created a 90-minute interactive session designed to educate participants on their knowledge of the current and emerging safety landscape. Leaders will come away with a clear picture of legislation in place, and what is currently being planned over the next few years, helping bursars/principals to apply these specifically to their schools.

Getting people back to work is crucial for ensuring the sustainability of services to your students. Our return to work and recovery solutions include early intervention services, job task analyses, mental health first aid training and ergonomic assessments.

Howden places significant emphasis on the risks your students face each day. As a risk transfer solution, Student Personal Accident cover should complement the unique needs and the mitigation strategies in place for your institution. With this in mind, our people specialists can work hand in hand with you to build a comprehensive solution for your risk needs.

Protect your schools

Howden supports schools with operational and emerging risk reviews, business continuity planning, and resilience strategies to minimise disruption from critical incidents. We provide asset valuations and registers to prevent underinsurance, an online WHS self-assessment tool, and expert guidance on workers’ compensation to reduce costs and improve safety. Our tailored solutions help schools stay compliant, protect assets, and maintain a safe, prepared learning environment.

We help schools complete a deep dive of their operational risks, as well as assessing the impact of emerging risks. Completed via a workshop or specific site visits, we develop risk registers and action plans for schools to implement.

We have developed an online tool, allowing schools to complete a self-assessment across all workplace health and safety.

Ensuring your school assets are adequately insured and can be replaced following a loss is one of the biggest responsibilities for bursars/principals. Schools require assurance that your insurance policies will respond as intended and are not subject to underinsurance or co-insurance clauses. We provide valuations for land, buildings, equipment, heritage assets and fine arts, and asset rebuild optimisation plans.

Not every incident can be anticipated but maintaining a level of preparedness can help mitigate the impacts from an incident or business disruption. We help schools develop robust plans in the event of critical incidents, emergencies or national disaster disruptions.

As a statutory class of insurance, Workers’ Compensation is often a significant spend for schools. We help schools take action to manage the impact of this cost, by analysing claims histories, undertaking targeted renewal strategies, and via consulting services including injury prevention strategies and education.