Guidance

Emergency planning and response for education, childcare and children’s social care settings

How educational and childcare settings should plan for and deal with emergencies, including significant public health incidents and severe weather.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 1 April 2022
• Last updated: 10 May 2023
  Show all updates

  1. 10 May 2023

     Updated 'Emergency planning and response for education, childcare and children's social care settings' with information on emergency alerts, building local partnerships and recording attendance for remote education. Also added links to additional resources, templates, and checklists.

  2. 28 October 2022

     Updated contact details in 'Emergency planning and response for education, childcare, and children’s social care settings'.

  3. 3 October 2022

     The guidance has been updated to include 'extreme heat' as an example of severe weather on pages 4 and 7.

  4. 26 August 2022

     Updated Department for Education incident support email address.

  5. 7 June 2022

     Updated DfE incident support helpline hours to Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm.

  6. 8 April 2022

     Updated guidance for children's social care providers, Critical workers annex and advice to check and register with Ofsted.

  7. 1 April 2022

     First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Emergency planning and response for education, childcare and children’s social care settings

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Vulnerable children and young people, and critical workers

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Details

This guidance applies to:

• early years
• wraparound childcare and out of school settings
• children’s social care
• schools
• further education settings
• higher education settings
• alternative provision settings
• special educational needs and disability (SEND) and specialist settings

It does not apply to nannies or au pairs, as they work in the child’s or children’s family home.

It includes information about:

• making an emergency plan
• prioritising education
• supporting staff, children, pupils and students during and following an emergency in your setting
• severe weather
• significant public health incidents
• workforce issues
• insurance
• emergency alerts
• building local partnerships

The guidance also details how educational and childcare settings should provide the following during an emergency:

• remote education (including recording attendance)
• free school meals
• education for vulnerable children and young people
• education for children of critical workers