As an educational institution, your main focus might be on ensuring best in class education for your students/clients, but making sure you have the right protections in place is something that cannot be overlooked. While you might already have covers such as Public Liability Insurance, there are some other types of insurance which may be worth considering for your organisation. Below, we break down some of the additional covers educational institutions might need:

If a student from your school is undertaking a work experience opportunity, there may be some additional homework you may need to do ensure they’re adequately protected. It’s tempting to assume they’ll be covered under the regular insurances you hold for your organisation, but this might not be the case. For example, if the student is working during a holiday period, they may not be covered under the school’s standard insurance policy.

Work Experience Insurance through Aon has been designed to help cover the risks specifically faced by interns and work experience candidates. It includes Public Liability Insurance, which may protect your students for their legal liability if they’re responsible for injury or property damage. It also includes Personal Accident cover if they suffer an accidental injury whilst working, this may also extend to when they are travelling directly to and from their workplace.

If your organisation owns entertainment equipment or musical instruments, then you may need to consider separate cover for these too. You know very well how expensive equipment and musical instruments can be, so if an event was to cause significant damage to them, the cost to replace them would not be a welcome expense at all. Even if you hold a Business Insurance pack which may cover contents at your site, cover for musical instruments and equipment may be limited. Equipment & musical instrument insurance through Aon has been specifically designed for performers, and those who use musical instruments for commercial purposes. It is designed to cover equipment and musical instruments if they’re damaged or stolen.

If you’re planning an event, no matter how prepared you might be, sometimes the only certainty is something not going to plan – even if it’s as seemingly small as train delays necessitating swapping of agenda items, or as major as severe weather forcing you to cancel. While there’s no way of changing the weather forecast or preventing a transport delay, there are several different insurance options available which may help cover costs you incur as a result of such unexpected incidents, but it shouldn’t be a last-minute purchase – many policies have a minimum period before the event during which they must be taken out. Aon recommends taking out insurance as early as possible to get the most out of your cover.

In the lead up to events season, here are some common event disasters, what you can do to prevent them - and how to minimise the impact if they do occur.

In a world of increasing competition, you might be considering holding a prize draw and offering up a major prize. Prize draws are a way to promote your institution and can be a creative way of increasing interest and awareness, however, the impact of the promotion can be limited by the amount of funds you have to invest towards the offered prize. A prize indemnity policy is a type of insurance that you could purchase to insure against the cost to you of someone winning a prize. For example, you might want to offer up a car as a prize if some correctly guesses the lock combination of a safe. If someone was to correctly guess the combination, Prize Indemnity Insurance may cover the cost of the car.

As an education institution, you may hold conferences, or open days to invite students to learn more about your organisation. While you might have had most conferences proceed without incident, you’ve probably at least heard of incidents where things went wrong causing significant disruption to an event. Whether it’s a protest, a loss of a video link, a major weather event or someone falling over, the chances of something going wrong is always prevalent. Insurance for Conference & Exhibition has been designed for larger scale events, and is designed to help cover your organisation if an event outside of your control causes a disruption, and leads you incurring out of pocket expenses.

Aon is firmly established as a leading risk and insurance advisor to the Education sector. Through Aon's experience in this sector, we have accumulated invaluable knowledge of the inherent risks faced by educational establishments, including some of the most esteemed Independent Schools and prestigious universities across Australia. In addition to Education Insurance, we can also arrange cover such as Equipment & Musical Instrument, Prize Indemnity, and Events Insurance.