Health and Safety for Out-of-Hours Community Education Programmes
The 2025–2027 Community Education Collective Agreementopen_in_new (CECA), which covers the work done by Out-of-Hours Music and Arts (OOHMA) and Adult Community Education (ACE) employees, was recently settled.
The collective reaffirms the positive obligation on schools to ensure their health and safety plans and procedures explicitly factor in community education programmes, especially those that occur outside the traditional 8:30 am to 4:30 pm window.
General principles of Health and Safety
You should be familiar with the Health and Safety provisions found in Part 11 of the CECA.
Schools must ensure that ACE and OOHMA employees are protected from harm to their health, wellbeing, safety and welfare by eliminating risks, or minimising them when they cannot be eliminated, as far as is reasonably practicable.
This obligation must be met in the context of the work actually being done by ACE and OOHMA employees, rather than based on assumptions about this work. A critical assumption to be challenged is that their work environment is the same as that for those who work during traditional school hours.
If you have not already done so, familiarise yourself with this topic by heading to our Help for Boards section on Health, Safety & Wellbeing.
What unique factors (alongside the factors normally considered) should schools be addressing when planning and setting procedures for Community Education programmes?
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After-hours security and first aid – ACE and OOHMA tutors often work outside the normal school operations of 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. Additionally, they may also be the only adult on site. Specific health and safety plans, therefore, need to factor this in when determining how to eliminate, or otherwise minimise, risk.
Depending on your context, this planning may include requiring staff to check in and out with someone, having effective lighting and security cameras between instruction spaces and car parking, providing staff accompaniment to their vehicles, having a security presence, offering first aid training to employees, and/or ensuring at least two adults (at least one of which is first aid trained) are on site at any one time. -
Dedicated workspaces – In line with clauses 10 – 12 of the Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations, your planning needs to include providing ACE and OOHMA staff with suitable spaces for instruction, administration work, and storage for community education programmes.
Suitable means that, among other matters, the space is appropriate for the specific work being carried out by the employee, there is sufficient space for the employee to carry out their work without discomfort, pain or injury, there is unimpeded emergency egress, the space has adequate lighting, and there is sufficient ventilation.
Your planning should consider whether alternate arrangements are needed for storage and office relocation, and whether proper spaces are provided.
Note that instruction should not take place in a specialist classroom (such as a science lab) unless it is required for the tutoring. Offices should generally not be used as storage areas for equipment.
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Worker engagement and participation – Schools should consider whether their current approach allows, as much as is reasonably practicable, for ACE and OOHMA employees to be engaged and participate.
Due to working after-hours, some employees (especially tutors) may not be captured in your existing processes. The board, as the PCBU, still has an obligation to engage with these employees both under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and the CECA.
ACE and OOHMA employees can be more effectively engaged by changing existing communication and representation approaches, having a dedicated health and safety committee focused on OOHMA and/or ACE programmes, or by creating a work group for OOHMA and/or ACE employees so they have a guaranteed health and safety representative to represent them.
Templates, resources, and references
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