How to write a forest school risk-benefit assessment

What a risk-benefit assessment is (and why it's not just a risk assessment)

An ordinary risk assessment asks one question: what could go wrong, and how do I stop it? The answer is always to remove the hazard. Followed to the end, you cancel the fire, ban the knives and rope off the muddy slope, and there's not much forest school left.

A risk-benefit assessment asks a second, equally serious question alongside the first: what is the benefit of doing this, and is it worth the residual risk once I've put sensible controls in place? This is the approach long championed in outdoor play and learning: the idea that children gain real, lasting good from challenge, and that managing risk is about keeping the benefit while making the hazard acceptable, not about driving risk to zero. The Health and Safety Executive has been clear for years that a "no risk" approach to children's play is neither possible nor desirable; the job is sensible, proportionate management.

In practice that means you write down the benefit next to the hazard, weigh the two honestly, and make a reasoned decision. A wobble on uneven ground builds balance and confidence. Tending a fire teaches focus and respect for danger. With the benefits written down, the document is a professional judgement you can explain to a parent or to Ofsted.

The three you need: site, activity and daily

Most forest schools work with three tiers of assessment, each doing a different job so you're not re-writing the same things every week.

• Site (or area) assessment. The standing hazards of the place itself: the pond, the boundary, the dead branches overhead (widow-makers), ticks, livestock, public access, the walk to and from the gate. You write it once per site and review it seasonally, because the woods change: a safe ditch in August is a different proposition after autumn rain.
• Activity assessment. One per thing you actually do: fire lighting, tool use, tree climbing, foraging, rope and shelter work, water play. These are reusable. Write a good fire assessment once and you bring it to every session that has a fire, rather than re-inventing it each time.
• Daily (dynamic) assessment. The on-the-day layer that the first two can't anticipate: today's weather, this group's mood, the branch that came down in the night, the child who's wound up. More on this below.

Together they stack. The site and activity assessments are your written groundwork, and the daily one is the judgement you make on the day, on top of them.

Keeping three sets of documents current is more bookkeeping than it first sounds. In the Forest School App they are a reusable library, stacked onto each session with a copy kept for that day, so the record shows exactly the assessments that were in force when you ran it: a forest school risk assessment app.

Writing it: hazard, who's at risk, control measure, and the benefit

A good risk-benefit assessment is just four clear parts: the hazard, who's at risk, the control measures that make it acceptable, and the benefit that justifies keeping the activity at all. That last column is the one generic templates leave out, and it's the one that matters most.

Here's a worked example you can copy straight into your own, three entries, each with all four parts:

Keep the language plain and specific. "Supervise children" tells nobody anything; "one fire steward seated by the pit whenever it's lit, water bucket within reach" is a control someone can actually carry out. Write controls as instructions, not aspirations.

Dynamic risk assessment: managing risk on the day

No written assessment can see the future, and forest school is deliberately child-led, so the most important assessing you do happens in your head, in the moment. Dynamic risk assessment is the continuous scanning every good leader does: reading the group, the weather and the ground, and adjusting as you go. The branch is wet today, so the climb is off. This child is over-excited near the fire, so they're redirected. The wind has got up, so you check the canopy for loose limbs before you settle the circle.

Notice the change, decide, act, and only then write it down: the children come first, and the line can wait until the group is settled. It still needs a light record, mostly for you. Keep it simple: a short dynamic-risk log noting what changed, the call you made and why. "10:15, wind rising, moved fire circle away from leaning ash, cancelled tree climbing." A line or two is plenty. Read a term of those back and you learn your own site: which conditions catch you out, which calls you keep having to make, and where the assessment needs changing for good.

A worked example: tool use and fire

Say you're running a session where the group will whittle tent pegs and then toast bread over a fire. You don't start from a blank page. You pull your reusable tool-use and fire activity assessments (already written, already weighing benefit against hazard) and you bring across your site assessment for the woodland you're in.

On arrival, the dynamic layer kicks in. It rained overnight, so you check the fire circle drains and the seating logs aren't greasy. The group is a lively Year 2 class, so you tighten the tool ratio, hand out knives one at a time, and run the cut-away-from-the-body talk-through before anyone touches a blade. Mid-session a gust picks up; you damp down the fire early and bring the toasting forward, then note it in the log once everyone is settled. Every control traces back to a written assessment, and your judgement on the day kept the tools and the fire going while keeping the children safe.

Keeping RBAs up to date without the paperwork

The honest problem with all of this is the admin. Reusable assessments only save time if they're easy to find, version and attach, and a dynamic-risk log only gets kept if writing it doesn't mean wrestling a damp clipboard with cold hands.

In the Forest School App you build your risk-benefit assessments once as a reusable library, then stack the ones you need onto each session. A snapshot travels with that session so your record shows exactly what was in force on the day, even after you later edit the master. In the woods you note each call in a tap or two once things are settled, with the time it happened, and it works fully offline, syncing when you're back in signal.

See how it fits together on the risk assessment app page, or start free and build your first reusable RBA today.

This guide is practical sector guidance to help you write your own assessments. It isn't legal advice. You remain responsible for your own risk management and policies.