School emergency plans and procedures
Critical incidents in schools
This guidance aims to help schools prepare for and respond to a critical incident. It outlines some of the key issues and areas for consideration which may arise.
There are resource sheets that can be tailored to your educational establishment. These templates have been made into individual sheets to give easier access to download the ones you want to use.
These documents have been produced collaboratively by our Educational Psychology Service and the Emergency Planning Team.
Please contact [email protected] if you would like to receive Microsoft Word versions of any of the documents.
This guidance will help schools meet their duties of care in respect of pupils and staff.
Critical incidents are defined as sudden, unexpected events which are distressing to pupils and/or staff.
Such incidents could include a wide range of events such as:
- violence against members of the school
- a serious accident
- the sudden death of a colleague or child
- the school being subjected to major vandalism or an attack
- a coach crash
- public health threats
- civil disturbances or terrorism
- a fire
Incidents can become critical when it constitutes a serious disruption arising with little or no warning on a scale beyond the coping capacity of the school operating under normal conditions.
Critical incidents are situations which are unfamiliar, potentially shocking and constantly evolving. They may be overwhelming and distressing initially and, as time goes on, they will have varying effects on school staff and pupils.
Critical incidents need to be carefully managed to ensure that the correct support is put in place in a timely and effective manner.
It is advised that your school or education setting ensures that plans are set out to include critical incidents which happen:
- on the school site
- off-site - for example, on a school visit
- during working hours
- outside working hours including weekends and holidays
- during before or after school clubs
- on open days, transition days, parents’ evenings and fetes
- during live performances with an audience
How to develop your plan
Alongside the immediate response to the critical incident, your plan should set out how your school or educational setting will respond in the coming days, weeks, months and even years to create the best environment for recovery.
Your school critical incident plan should be reviewed, edited and practised regularly to ensure it is up to date and tailored to meet the individualised needs of your staff, students, families and educational setting.
The plan should be shared with all members of your staff team and should form an essential part of staff induction. Research suggests that an early and well-managed response can reduce or even prevent longer term difficulties.
Although there are rare occurrences where this may not be possible, the aim of your plan should be to minimise disruption to your students’ education.
Department for Education (DfE) guidance
The DfE has provided guidance on emergency planning and responses.
The following documents give guidance and resources to schools/settings in planning for and managing emergency situations which affect their establishment.
Critical Incident Guidance and Framework Documents
Critical Incident Operational Tools, Templates, and Support Resources
Emergency contact details
In the event of an emergency we may need to urgently contact someone from your school. We aim to contact your school on an annual basis to verify the contact details we hold.
We will ask you to provide out of hours contact details to ensure the appropriate person can be contacted without delay in the event of an emergency incident of potential incident. All information provided will be maintained securely and used with total discretion, only by authorised staff.
Any changes to contact details (including temporary changes due to holiday, sickness or long term absence) should be emailed to the Emergency Planning Team. All information provided will be maintained securely and used with total discretion, only by authorised staff.
Last updated 29 January 2026