education.vic.gov.au

School operations

Risk Management – Schools

Step 5 – Risk treatments

A risk treatment is the way in which you respond to a risk.

Options for risk treatments include:

  • Share: if practical, share all or some of the risk with outsourced parties or insurers.
  • Terminate: cease the activity altogether.
  • Accept: this will require appropriate authority.
  • Reduce: apply additional treatments until the risk is reduced to an acceptable level.

The way you treat a risk will depend on the outcome of your evaluation:

  • Risks that are rated high or extreme require treatment to reduce risk to a more acceptable level. You may also choose to share or terminate the risk as long as that option will reduce the risk rating.
  • Risks that are rated low or medium do not necessarily require further actions to reduce and are considered acceptable.

Risk treatment is a cyclical process:

  • assess the risk
  • decide whether the risk level is acceptable
  • implement a treatment option
  • conduct a second assessment to confirm that the treatment has reduced the risk to expected level. (This second evaluation is called the ‘target assessment’).

A treatment that reduces the risk level may become a new control.

Guidance chapter outlining step 5 of the risk management process for schools – determining the appropriate risk treatment based on the outcome of a risk evaluation

Reviewed 07 June 2024

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