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Risk and Compliance

School risk assessment software for independent schools

The assessment a teacher actually fills in.

A risk assessment is not the register. The register is what the board sees; the assessment is one kiln, one camp, one contractor, on one day.

Risk Assessments register for Hogwarts showing draft and approved activity assessments, hazards, dates, assessors and approval owners.
Accountability for a risk in EthosOne, showing the named risk owner, risk lead and risk manager against it.
EthosOne Risk home listing separate AI, operational, financial and school board risk registers with scope and owners in the Hogwarts demo tenant.
A school board risk opened in EthosOne showing inherent and residual ratings, treatment progress and named digital-safety controls.

Real captures · Risk and Compliance · Hogwarts demo tenant.

In one paragraph

A school risk assessment records a hazard, why it could happen, what would follow, how likely and how severe that is

What is being done about it, and who is responsible. Each hazard carries a cause, a consequence, a matrix rating, a response and a responsible owner.

What we keep hearing

The assessment for the Year 9 camp exists. It was done properly, by someone who knew the site, and it is a Word file on a laptop that left with them. The camp runs again in March.

Whoever picks it up starts from a document they cannot date, cannot tell was approved, and cannot tell whether the hazards in it were the hazards of that site or of a different one two years ago.

The problem

  1. The form is whatever was to hand

    One faculty assesses on a template from a conference, another on a form the previous business manager built, a third on a page of notes. None of them is wrong and none of them can be compared, so nobody can say which activities have been assessed and which have not.

  2. A rating without a reason is a number

    A hazard marked "medium" with no cause and no consequence tells a reviewer nothing about whether the judgement was sound. It tells them somebody had an opinion.

  3. The assessment and the activity drift apart

    The venue changes, the supervision ratio changes, the bus company changes. The assessment does not, because nothing connects it to the thing it was assessing.

What it does

Five views, one reconciled picture. Each one drills to the record it came from.

  • Risk Assessments register for Hogwarts showing draft and approved activity assessments, hazards, dates, assessors and approval owners.
    01

    Risk assessments

    Every assessment the school holds, in folders by operating context. A coordinator opens Excursions and sees excursions, not the whole register.

  • EthosOne Add Hazard form with cause, consequence, likelihood-impact matrix, responsible user, controls and a nested response editor.
    02

    Draft and approved

    The filter that answers the only question a coordinator has in the week before an activity: what is still a draft. Approved work and work in progress are never the same list.

  • The AI Risk Register overview: the scope and context, then the risk distribution as two five-by-five heat maps, inherent on the left and residual on the right, with the count of risks in each cell, Hogwarts demo tenant.
    03

    Hazard detail

    One hazard, with its cause, its consequence, a matrix rating, the response and a responsible owner. The rating sits beside the reasoning that produced it, so a reviewer can disagree with the judgement rather than guess at it.

  • The Risk Distribution card from a school risk register: a five by five likelihood and impact matrix for inherent risk beside the same matrix for residual risk, so the exposure left after controls and treatments is read against the exposure before them.
    04

    Bowtie report

    The assessment as a Bowtie PDF: the hazard in the middle, the causes on one side, the consequences on the other, the controls between. It is the picture a board reads without training and the one most reviewers ask for.

  • Year 7 Camp Excursion details step showing student and supervisor counts, ratio status, teacher in charge, supervising staff and volunteers.
    05

    Excursions

    A nine-step workspace covering basic information, staff, participants, venue, transport, medical and emergency, risk assessment, approval and closure, including departure checks and post-activity review. Each excursion links to a current operational risk assessment rather than to a checklist score.

Where it sits

The register is the board's summary of exposure, rated against an approved appetite, and it lives in school risk management software. Assessments are the operational layer underneath it. Keeping them in one document either frightens a board with the detail of a kiln or hides the kiln inside a strategic rating.

Evidence captured while the work happens goes to assurance logs and forms, and obligations with a date and an owner sit in the compliance calendar.

Who it is for

The teacher completing an assessment for an activity they are running. The coordinator who has to know what is still in draft. The business manager who signs. The principal who carries duty of care whether or not the paperwork was finished.

Everything you asked us, answered

The seven we are asked every time.

Still weighing something up? Thirty minutes with us, on your own registers, answers the rest.

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  1. 01Who fills these in, in practice?

    The person running the activity. The point of a fixed shape is that a teacher can complete one without training and a coordinator can read fifty of them without interpreting fifty formats.

  2. 02Can we see what is still a draft before a camp leaves?

    Yes. Assessments filter by Draft or Approved, which is the question a coordinator has in the week before an activity.

  3. 03What does an excursion actually involve?

    Nine steps: basic information, staff, participants, venue, transport, medical and emergency, risk assessment, approval and closure. Departure checks and post-activity review are part of it. The excursion links to a current operational risk assessment rather than a checklist score, so the assessment and the activity stay attached.

  4. 04Is this the same thing as the risk register?

    No, and keeping them separate is deliberate. The register is board-level exposure against appetite. An assessment is one activity on one day. They connect, and they are not the same document.

  5. 05Can we produce something for the board or a reviewer?

    A Bowtie report generates from any assessment as a PDF: hazard, causes, consequences, controls. It is the form most boards and most reviewers already read.

  6. 06What does it cost?

    Risk assessments sit in Risk and Compliance, a Focus module at $5,000 a year on top of Core at $15,000 a year with unlimited users. Every price is published and the estimator on the pricing page returns a number without a conversation.

  7. 07Risk and Compliance, in full: what does it cover?

    EthosOne keeps those assessments in folders by operating context, so excursions sit with excursions and plant sits with plant, and filters them by Draft or Approved so a coordinator can see what is still waiting. A Bowtie report generates from any assessment as a PDF, which is the form most boards and most regulators recognise. Excursions have their own nine-step workspace that links to a current operational risk assessment rather than a checklist score. It is part of Risk and Compliance, a Focus module at $5,000 a year on top of Core.

PolicyAI

Before you book

What are the AI paragraphs you are currently missing from your policies? Watch how we do it.

Free, under ten minutes, and yours to keep whether or not you talk to us.

It meets all of the real frustrations of business directors in one place.
Nick MillerDirector of Business, Blackfriars Priory School
School governance and risk is a complex area without a clear solution.
David RuggieroPrincipal, Blackfriars Priory School

The assessment a teacheractually fills in.

Risk and Compliance: $5,000 a year with no per-user fees.