Created on: 09 Sep 2026
This updated Health and Safety Representative Handbook has been updated to reflect the changing realities of the workplaces of EIS members.
The EIS knows that workload is making teachers unwell and turning prospective entrants to the profession in other directions. Schools, colleges and universities must be safe and healthy places for teachers and lecturers to work in, and for pupils and students to learn in.
The physical environment, work practices and work culture must all be conducive to teachers and lecturers being safe and heathy and work, and pupils and students safe and healthy in their places of learning.
Increasingly, workplace stress and the resulting levels of workplace-related mental ill health are a significant concern across the education sector. Similarly, EIS members in schools have reported significantly increased incidence of pupil behaviours that give serious cause for concern in respect of the risk that they pose to everyone’s health and safety, the risks exacerbated by insufficient staffing levels.
But workplace stress and risks posed by violent and aggressive behaviours are not inevitable features of working in education; they are workplace hazards that must be managed by employers like any other, in compliance with Health and Safety law.
This modernised version of the EIS Health and Safety Handbook includes updated HSE (Health and Safety Executive) guidance on recognising and addressing the causes of stress, and advice on how it should be managed in the workplace. The newly updated Health and Safety Inspection Checklist contains specific prompts for Reps on stress and violence.
More “traditional” hazards also persist in our educational establishments. Issues such as dust, poor ventilation and insufficient cleaning continue to present risks to health and safety that require due attention.
Proper control measures, routine monitoring and whole-establishment Safety Inspections remain vital steps to ensure employers take all reasonable steps to reduce risk of harm.
EIS Health and Safety Representatives undertake an absolutely essential role in identifying risks and challenging unsafe practice. Your efforts are often made quietly, yet you make a significant and tangible difference for your colleagues and their learners: better risk management, a stronger safety culture, and fewer avoidable injuries and harms.
On behalf of the EIS, thank you for your contribution – whether you are newly trained or long-established, working in a small school or across several college or university campuses, your work really matters and is very much appreciated.