Teaching spaces can hold large numbers of people
A teaching space brings school children, students or other learners together for tuition. Classrooms and lecture theatres can hold a large number of people in a comparatively small area, so the building needs escape routes, exits, detection, alarms and evacuation arrangements that match its real capacity.
A classroom block generally holds more people than a comparable office floor. This concentrates the property and liability exposure at the same time: a safety failure can affect many learners and staff together.
A school hall may be used for assemblies, performances or indoor sport. Its safety arrangements should reflect whether people are seated, standing or taking part in an event, not simply its ordinary day-to-day use.
Source: National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act 103 of 1977, regulation A20 and Table 1, read with regulation A21 and Table 2 (design population).
A campus contains many different building risks
Where areas have different uses, describe each one separately. A school or campus contains far more than classrooms, so a single description of the whole site tells an insurer very little.
The property record should identify teaching spaces, halls, places of worship, sports pavilions and stands, boarding residences, libraries, administration offices and tuck shops. Each has a different pattern of people, access and safety needs.
Higher-hazard areas are often overlooked. Science laboratories and technical training workshops can involve chemicals, gas and machinery. Storage areas, groundskeeping stores holding fuel or chemicals, plant rooms and parking need their own accurate description instead of being folded into a campus-wide entry.
Source: National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act 103 of 1977, regulation A20 and Table 1.
The holidays: when education property actually suffers its losses
Schools and campuses stand empty for extended, entirely predictable periods. That combination - valuable, unoccupied, unattended and known in advance to be so - produces the loss pattern the class is known for: theft of copper cable, roof sheeting, taps and fittings, computer equipment and laboratory apparatus, followed by vandalism and, in the more serious cases, arson.
Policies respond to unoccupancy with conditions rather than silence. Cover is commonly subject to notification once premises are unoccupied beyond a stated period, and may be restricted to a narrower set of perils, made subject to a higher deductible, or made conditional on specified security arrangements during that period. Reading the unoccupancy condition against the actual academic calendar is one of the few checks in this class that takes ten minutes and prevents a declined claim.
The practical controls follow the same pattern. Alarm systems monitored and tested before the break rather than after it, armed response contracts current, perimeter integrity and lighting maintained, high-value portable equipment consolidated into a secured store rather than left distributed across classrooms, water and gas isolated where practical, and a documented inspection routine during the break with dated records. Each of these is inexpensive and each is the sort of evidence an insurer relies on when setting terms for the following year.
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Liability to learners, and why public and independent schools are not in the same position
An education institution owes a duty of care to children and young adults across classrooms, laboratories, workshops, sports fields, swimming pools, playgrounds, transport and excursions. Sports injuries, playground falls, laboratory accidents, drowning incidents and injuries during outings are the recurring claims, and the standard of supervision expected rises as the age of the learner falls.
For public schools, the South African Schools Act places the liability in a particular place. Section 60 provides that the State is liable for any damage or loss caused as a result of any act or omission in connection with any school activity conducted by a public school, and for which that public school would have been liable but for that section. The provision does not extend to independent schools, which carry their own liability in full and therefore have to arrange their own cover for it.
That distinction has practical consequences that are frequently misunderstood in both directions. An independent school assuming it sits in the same position as the public school down the road is uninsured for its principal liability exposure. A public school governing body assuming section 60 answers everything overlooks that the section is directed at school activities, and that the body itself retains functions and responsibilities under the Act in relation to the school's property, funds and administration.
The statutory occupational health and safety duties apply alongside all of this. The Occupational Health and Safety Act extends the employer's general duty to persons other than employees who may be affected by the undertaking, which captures learners, students, parents, visitors and contractors on the site.
Source: South African Schools Act 84 of 1996, section 60; Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993, sections 8 and 9.
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Boarding: sleeping accommodation changes the fire problem
A boarding house or student residence introduces the one factor a day school does not have: occupants asleep in the building at night, with reduced supervision, many of them minors. Shared-room accommodation needs safety and evacuation arrangements that reflect the number of people sleeping in each room.
Sleeping occupancy changes the fire strategy rather than simply intensifying it. Detection has to reach sleeping areas and be audible enough to wake occupants, escape routes have to work for people who are disoriented, fire-resistant separation between sleeping and other areas is critical, and evacuation procedures have to be rehearsed with the staffing actually present overnight rather than the daytime complement.
The behavioural exposures are equally specific. Unauthorised appliances in rooms, overloaded multi-plug adaptors, candles and heaters during winter, smoking, and cooking in rooms not designed for it are the ignition sources that recur. Kitchen and dining facilities serving a boarding establishment bring the same extraction canopy cleaning, deep fat fryer and gas certificate requirements as any commercial catering operation.
Source: National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act 103 of 1977, regulation A20 and Table 1, read with SANS 10400-T (fire protection) and SANS 10139 (fire detection and alarm systems).
Interruption measured in academic terms, not construction weeks
An education institution cannot restart when the builders finish. It restarts at the beginning of a term or an academic year, and everything else has to be arranged around that fixed calendar. A classroom block destroyed in March that could be rebuilt in nine months is not a nine month interruption, because the institution will not move learners back mid-year.
That makes the indemnity period a calendar question. It must reach making safe, demolition, redesign, plan approval, construction and the occupation certificate, and then extend to the next practical point in the academic year at which occupation can resume. Where enrolment is affected - parents who moved children elsewhere during the disruption do not generally move them back the following year - the recovery of fee income runs a further year beyond that again.
Increased cost of working carries unusual weight here for the same reason. Temporary classrooms, hiring alternative venues, transport arrangements to a substitute site, extended hours and retaining teaching staff through the disruption are all expenditure that keeps the institution operating and protects enrolment, which is the thing that determines the size of the ultimate loss. Fee income should be projected forward across the whole indemnity period, including boarding fees and the recoveries that stop when the facility does.
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Sasria and the unrest exposure specific to education property
Riot, strike, public disorder, civil commotion and connected malicious damage are excluded from every standard commercial property and business interruption policy sold in South Africa. Sasria SOC Ltd, the state-owned special risk insurer, is the only insurer permitted to provide this cover, and it attaches as a coupon to the underlying policy.
Education property has a long and specific South African history with this class of loss. Schools and campuses are damaged during community protest over matters unconnected with the institution, and student protest action has produced substantial damage to higher education property. In both cases the buildings themselves were not the dispute.
The two failures are the familiar ones. A Sasria sum insured that does not mirror the main policy leaves a site fully covered for fire and partly covered for the event that actually happened. A material damage coupon without a matching business interruption coupon leaves the fee income uninsured for exactly the class of event most likely to close a campus for an extended period.
Source: Insurance Act 18 of 2017; Sasria SOC Ltd, the state-owned special risk insurer for South Africa (FSP licence 39117).
COMMON QUESTIONS
School and campus insurance questions, answered clearly.
What should schools consider when planning capacity and evacuation?
Teaching spaces can hold large numbers of learners and staff in a small area. Confirm that exits, escape routes, alarms and evacuation arrangements match the people expected to use each space, especially halls and shared-room accommodation.
Should a whole campus be described as one risk?
No. Halls, chapels, pavilions, residences, libraries, laboratories, workshops, administration offices, tuck shops, stores and plant rooms all have different uses. The higher-hazard areas, particularly laboratories, workshops and stores, are the ones most often missed from the insurance information.
Why do insurers ask about school holidays?
Because that is when the losses happen. Extended, predictable vacancy produces theft of cable, roof sheeting, fittings and equipment, followed by vandalism and arson. Policies commonly respond with an unoccupancy condition requiring notification after a stated period and sometimes restricting perils or imposing security requirements.
Is a public school's liability the same as an independent school's?
No. Section 60 of the South African Schools Act provides that the State is liable for damage or loss caused by an act or omission in connection with a school activity conducted by a public school, for which the school would otherwise have been liable. That provision does not extend to independent schools, which carry their own liability and must arrange cover for it.
Does section 60 mean a public school needs no liability cover at all?
It should not be read that broadly. The section is directed at damage or loss in connection with school activities conducted by a public school, and the governing body retains functions and responsibilities under the Act in relation to the school's property, funds and administration. The position should be established rather than assumed.
What changes when a school has boarding facilities?
Occupants sleep in the building at night, often with reduced supervision and many of them minors. Detection has to reach and wake sleeping occupants, fire-resistant separation between sleeping and other areas matters more, and evacuation must be rehearsed at overnight staffing levels rather than daytime ones.
How should the indemnity period be set for a school?
By the academic calendar rather than the construction programme. An institution restarts at the beginning of a term or year, so the period must reach construction and the occupation certificate and then extend to the next practical point at which occupation can resume - and further again where enrolment has been affected.
Are science laboratories treated differently?
Yes. Laboratories and technical training workshops can involve chemicals, gas and machinery, creating a different fire risk from a classroom. Record flammable-liquid quantities, storage arrangements and separation measures rather than assuming they fall within the classroom description.
Is equipment taken off site on excursions covered?
Not automatically. Portable equipment away from the premises, and liability arising from excursions and transport, are separate considerations from the buildings and contents cover and should be identified when the programme is arranged.
Does Sasria cover damage from student protest action?
Riot, strike, public disorder and civil commotion are excluded from standard property and business interruption policies and are covered only by a Sasria coupon attached to the underlying policy. Both a material damage coupon and a business interruption coupon are needed if lost fee income is to be covered as well as the damage.
