How to write a forest school risk-benefit assessment (with a template)

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? Left to its own logic it has only one direction of travel: remove the hazard. Follow that to the end and you cancel the fire, ban the knives and rope off the muddy slope, and you've quietly cancelled forest school along with them.

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. Putting those benefits on the page is what turns a defensive document into a professional judgement you can stand behind, whether to a parent, to Ofsted, or to your own conscience on the day.

The three you need: site, activity and daily

Most settings 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 considered, written groundwork; the daily one is the living judgement you make in the moment, on top of them.

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.

It's a judgement, not a form, but it still needs a light record, because "we decided on the day" is only credible if you can show it. 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. It demonstrates that your decisions were reasoned and responsive, which is exactly what an inspector or a parent wants to see.

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 note it in the log, damp down the fire early and bring the toasting forward. Nothing here was improvised from nothing, because every control traces back to a written assessment, but the day-of judgement is what kept the benefit (real tools, real fire, real pride) while keeping the children safe. That's a risk-benefit assessment working as it should: considered groundwork, plus a leader thinking on their feet.

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.

That's the part the Forest School app is built to take off your plate. 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. When you're out in the woods you log dynamic risk in a tap or two, and it works fully offline, syncing when you're back in signal. The result is a complete, defensible record that builds itself as you work, rather than a folder of documents you dread updating.

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. Your setting remains responsible for its own risk management and policies.