Student Travel Risk Specialist

26/27 School Year

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Job Description

The Student Travel Risk Specialist is a critical role responsible for ensuring the well-being of students during all school-sponsored trips, both locally and internationally. 

This role involves developing, implementing, and overseeing comprehensive risk management, health, and safety protocols for curricular and co-curricular trips across all school divisions. The Specialist ensures that all trips are planned and managed to the highest industry standards, fulfilling safety requirements while supporting challenging and responsible learning experiences beyond the classroom.

Overview

  • Lead Travel Risk Management: Ensure all trips are administered to the highest standards, prioritizing student safety and educational objectives.
  • Support Active Participants: Monitor the leadership and administration of trips to support staff and students in the field.
  • Assess and Mitigate Risk: Conduct thorough risk assessments and implement mitigation strategies for all trip types, ensuring consistent safety standards for both local field trips and international expeditions.
  • Promote Safety Culture: Foster a robust culture of health and safety through policy development, comprehensive training, and clear communication.

Position Responsibilities

Institutional Travel Risk Management

  • Policy and SOP Development: Create, implement, and align off-campus trip policies across all divisions (ES, MS, HS) to establish a single institutional "source of truth," including user-friendly Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and manuals with preparation checklists.
  • Major Incident Planning: Develop and maintain a Major Incident Policy specifically tailored for all school educational travels (Grade level trips, service trips, sports trips, HS Interim Semester and academic overseas conferences / exchanges
  • Vendor and Site Audits: Research and audit new and existing service providers, including evaluating vendor suitability and undertaking site visits as necessary.
  • Vendor Auditing Framework: Establish and maintain a formalized, standardized auditing framework to ensure consistent vetting of all transport, accommodation, and activity providers against safety, insurance, and emergency response capabilities.
  • Emergency Support Liaison: Act as the primary institutional liaison with external crisis support partners (e.g., Crisis 24), managing partner relationships, facilitating pre-travel briefings, and establishing emergency communication protocols.
  • Staff Training: Lead staff risk-management training, including scenario practice and emergency response rehearsals.
  • Training Refresh Cycle: Formalize and manage a mandatory trip leader training and certification refresh cycle, overseeing the design and delivery to ensure consistent competency across the school.
  • Technical Oversight: Ensure technical checks and audits of equipment are conducted in line with requirements.

Health and Safety Oversight

  • Incident Data and Analytics: Investigate accidents during trips and systematically track and analyze "near-miss" data to identify trends and drive proactive preventative measures.
  • Medical Information Management: Implement a confidential process for managing educator and student medical information and emergency action plans for trip participation. This will include psychological and mental health risk mitigation procedures.
  • Safety Training Standards: Oversee First Aid and CPR requirements for trip leaders and coordinate training to achieve target certification ratios.
  • Regulatory Compliance: Ensure compliance with local authority requirements and review contractor documents, such as Method Statements and Risk Assessments.

Operational and Administrative Support

  • Workflow Monitoring: Ensure trip leaders complete all requirements in the Overseas Trip module at least two weeks before departure.
  • Budget Management: Train trip leaders on budget templates and ensure submissions adhere to financial guidelines.
  • Community Engagement: Assist in reviewing information for parents and the community and support student/parent presentations.

The above job description is only indicative of the broad set of duties and responsibilities. Distribution of tasks is assigned by the supervisor. Other tasks may be assigned on the job, as deemed necessary by the supervisor.



Skills & Requirements

Position Requirements & Qualifications


  • Experience working in a school, university, youth organisation, outdoor education provider or another setting with a comparable duty of care is strongly preferred.
  • Minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience.
  • At least 2 years in a large institutional or commercial environment focusing on health, safety, and risk management.
  • Essential experience in travel risk assessment, mitigation, and logistical planning for student trips.
  • Experience in developing and implementing travel SOPs.
  • Completion of 'First Responder' training or similar critical incident response experience is highly valued.
  • Communication: Excellent English oral and written communication skills, including report writing.
  • Crisis Management: Ability to manage and communicate calmly and professionally during emergencies.
  • Interpersonal: Strong relationship-building skills and the ability to work co-operatively with administrative and faculty teams.
  • Technical: Competence in working with local authorities and understanding regulatory requirements.
  • Physical Health & Field Readiness: Physically able and willing to undertake local and international site inspections in varied environments. This may include prolonged walking, uneven terrain, stairs, heat and humidity, altitude, remote locations, water-based environments and observation or participation in selected outdoor or adventure activities where appropriate to the assessment.

Working requirements

  • Work Year: 12-month Work Schedule
  • Flexibility and Travel: Requires periodic local and international travel, including visits to remote or physically demanding locations, and the ability to work outside normal hours for trip support, incident response or duty-manager coverage. Some travel or incident support may arise at short notice.