Schools and nurseries

Who the guidance covers

The Department for Education published its guidance on emergency planning and response for education, childcare and children's social care settings on 1 April 2022 and last updated it on 10 May 2023. It applies in England to early years providers including childminders, preschools and nurseries; wraparound and out-of-school settings such as after-school clubs and tuition; children's homes and other residential children's social care; schools; colleges; universities; alternative provision; and special educational needs and disability settings. It does not apply to nannies or au pairs, who work in the family home. Safeguarding duties continue through any emergency.

What to plan for

All settings should have emergency plans. The plan should explain how the setting would respond if it had to take temporary action, whether at the setting or on a trip. The department asks for plans generic enough to cover a range of incidents, inside and outside working hours, including weekends and holidays. Its list: public health incidents, severe weather including extreme heat, flooding, storms and snow, serious injury to a child or member of staff, fire, significant damage to the building, criminal activity such as a bomb threat, loss of power or telecommunications, disruption to normal services, a cyber incident or data breach, and the lasting effects of a disaster in the local community.

What a good plan contains

The guidance lists seven things: roles and responsibilities; when and how to get advice; the types of step you might take and how you would enact them quickly; a list of key contacts; how every child would continue to receive the education and care they are entitled to, including remote education where appropriate; how changes would be communicated to children, parents, carers and staff; and how you would respond if your advice were not accepted. Plans should also include a response to a government emergency alert.

Partnerships and process

Effective planning includes relationships that may be needed in an emergency: nearby education and childcare settings, the police, the local authority and the local resilience forum. The department describes preparation as an ongoing process of awareness, risk assessment, contingency planning, staff training, exercises and tests such as fire drills, reviewing protocols and communication, and coordination with the relevant bodies. Staff, management boards and governors should be consulted, and a lessons learnt exercise should follow any crisis. The guidance links to a template and training materials, and advises checking first whether the local authority has issued its own.

Severe weather

In severe weather a setting should stay open and let as many children attend as it safely can. Closing temporarily may be necessary because of inaccessibility or risk of injury, but the setting should do all it can to reopen quickly, and offering remote education does not change that. A provider that moves to temporary premises should check whether they need registering with Ofsted.

Staff shortages

Follow the usual process for covering absence. Early years settings should work with the local authority, keep staffing as consistent as possible, and must keep at least one person with a current paediatric first aid certificate on the premises at all times. Options include pooling staff with another setting. Schools can use temporary staff and bring classes together, within the limit of 30 pupils per teacher in an infant class. If places have to be prioritised, the order is vulnerable children and young people, the children of critical workers, and pupils due to sit public examinations. Schools and colleges should be ready to provide remote education and to keep providing free school meals. See writing a continuity plan and testing the plan for the general method.