Top tips for rethinking risk on Creating Value In Schools

Leadership

School improvement

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Risk management is one of the most powerful tools available to school leaders and governors – yet it's often reduced to a compliance exercise, reviewed once a year and filed away. Drawn from our conversation with Emma Gray and Helen Burge in Unbound SBLs: Reconsidering Risk, these tips will help you rethink risk as a dynamic, strategic asset that drives better decisions at every level of your school or trust.

"Risk management is important because it helps us strategically navigate an organisation, from school development plan to the outcomes that it wants to achieve... It's embedded in every decision we make." (Helen Burge)

12 top tips for rethinking risk

Don't confuse strategic risk management with risk assessment. They are different things. Risk management is not a paper exercise – done well, it's embedded in every decision you make.
Get governors involved in discussing risk. Risk is something everyone can contribute to, regardless of their background. Start with: what's the vision for our school or trust? Then ask: what are the risks of us not achieving that vision? You don't need to be an educationalist to have a valuable perspective on that question.
Make the risk register review the first item on the agenda, not the last. When it comes last, it gets the least attention at exactly the point it deserves the most. Your key risks should be shaping the meeting, not summarised at the end of it.
Categorise your risks. Try organising them into three areas: strategic risks, operational risks, and educational risks. This gives your risk register a clear structure that works at every level of leadership and governance.
Keep it focused. Aim for a maximum of three live risks within each of those three categories – nine risks in total. That's enough to be meaningful, and few enough to be manageable and memorable.
Don't fill your register with risks you've already mitigated. If you have good controls and processes in place, it's not a current risk. Focus your attention on the things that could actually go wrong in the next few years.
Use risk as the starting point for strategic planning. For example, if you've identified a demographic dip that will hit your roll numbers in three years' time, what do you need to do now to protect the school? What does it mean for your staffing structure or number of classes? Can integrated curriculum financial planning (ICFP) help you model scenarios? Are there changes you'll need to communicate – and reputational risks to manage? Will you need communications expertise at some point? Good risk management means spotting this early and planning ahead.
Link your key risks to your KPIs. Your risk register should inform what you monitor. If falling pupil numbers is a key risk, what metrics will give you early warning signals? Staff turnover, pupil movement within the year, and ICFP metrics are all worth tracking as part of your risk monitoring.
Know your lines of defence. For every significant risk, think about your levels of assurance. For financial risk, for example: your first line of defence is operational – your day-to-day financial controls and procedures. Your second line is reporting to governors or trustees against KPIs, such as whether invoices are being paid on time. Your third line is an independent audit. Being clear about all three gives everyone confidence that risk is being managed, not just recorded.
Use your assurance tools wisely. The schools financial value standard (SFVS) for maintained schools and internal scrutiny for academies are part of your lines of defence – but only if you use them well. If your SFVS has had the same action outcomes for three years running, is it actually driving improvement? If you're commissioning internal scrutiny in an area you know is already strong, what value is that adding? Point your assurance activity where it's genuinely needed.
Give every risk a named owner. It's the owner's responsibility to monitor what's happening, keep actions moving forward, and report back to the board. A risk that belongs to everyone belongs to no-one.
Review your risks regularly. Risk is dynamic – demographic shifts, policy changes, local developments – the picture can change quickly. A risk register reviewed once a year becomes a compliance document. Build in regular reviews so that your register reflects the current reality, not last year's.

"It's the community and the pupils that will suffer if you don't look at risk or if you don't have those strategic plans." (Emma Gray)

Risk management, done well, isn't about paperwork or ticking boxes. It's about making sure that every decision – at every level of your school or trust – is helping you achieve your vision and protect the community you serve.

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Top tips for rethinking risk

12 top tips for rethinking risk

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