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Health and safety education

Our position on health and safety in qualifications, skills and training

Integrating occupational health and safety into education pathways and life-long learning helps create safer and healthier workplaces and communities. It reduces preventable workplace harm such as injuries, ill health and occupational diseases and delivers long-term business and economic benefits. To ensure the workers of today and future workers have the health and safety skills they need, we must collectively take action now.

Why this matters

Most people aged 20 to 65 spend one third of their waking hours at work. Educating and training our future workforce about health and safety can help prevent work-related harm.

Why young workers are at greater risk

Young workers may be:

  • unfamiliar with workplace hazards and risk assessments
  • lacking in experience to challenge unsafe practices
  • vulnerable to poor safety culture and inadequate role models
  • assigned higher risk and physically demanding tasks without enough training
  • unaware of their worker rights and how to raise concerns.

Young workers are defined as those under the age of 18 for the purpose of Great Britain’s health and safety legislation. Globally, the age range of young workers can differ, but generally 15–24 year olds are considered young workers. 

Investing in early occupational safety and health education protects young workers. It delivers measurable economic benefits through reduced workplace accidents. Lower insurance costs and improved productivity across entire careers follows on.

What needs to change?

We need a cultural shift to reduce occupational injury, illness and disease among our future workers.

We want today's students and future generations to be the safe, healthy, and productive workers of tomorrow.

If children learn about safety and health early as part of school curriculum, it becomes natural to their work, play, and life.

Early occupational safety and health education empowers young people to identify and manage risks proactively. This enables the reduction of preventable work-related injuries and illnesses throughout their careers.

A generation of young workers equipped with occupational safety and health knowledge will bring long-term economic benefits to business.

Future managers and leaders must recognise that safety, health and wellbeing are foundations of effective leadership, not operational add-ons. Embedding these principles into apprenticeships and workforce development builds the right mindset and behaviours from the start.

What needs to happen?

Legislate occupational safety and health into the national curriculum.

Work with occupational safety and health professionals and education authorities to place health and safety and risk awareness into education.

Integrate workplace safety competencies into teacher training and professional development programmes.

Take a whole-school approach to bringing safety and health into mainstream education. This includes through curricula, student and teacher training, and school management representatives.

Focus age-appropriate learning on hazard recognition, risk assessment and safer behaviour.

Provide occupational safety and health education resources appropriate to age levels and subjects.

Train the trainer: involve teachers in occupational safety and health in schools. This helps give them the knowledge and confidence to teach risk education to pupils.

Include occupational safety and health in the mainstream of higher education. This will reach future professionals such as engineers, architects, medical professionals, business professionals and managers.

Integrate occupational safety and health competencies into vocational training, apprenticeships and technical education programmes.

Partner with professional occupational safety and health bodies to ensure relevance to workplace needs.

Provide routes to professional safety qualifications within degree and diploma programmes.

When children learn about workplace safety at school, this knowledge becomes part of how they work, live and make decisions throughout their lives.

From policy to implementation

Building knowledge, awareness and skills in people will help reduce the risk of harm. It will also inform workers about their rights and what can cause them harm at work. They will learn how to prevent that harm and protect themselves.

Health and safety education, qualifications, training and skills help reduce incidents of work-related harm. They help compliance and build safe and healthy cultures. This in turn supports business outcomes such as performance and production.

The level of education, qualification and skills will depend on the role being undertaken. You will identify training needs as an outcome of risk assessments and as part of your training needs analysis.

From awareness training to qualifications, CPD and professional membership, there is a coherent pathway for career-long growth – in the UK and internationally.

IOSH’s courses are an example of health and safety training for workers, managers and leaders.

These courses progress from one level to another, building knowledge, understanding and competence in each subject area.

Health and safety qualifications are the next level to these courses. They will be required for those acting in professional health and safety roles.

IOSH qualifications

Whether just starting out or moving into leadership, IOSH training and qualifications build the right knowledge and behaviours at every stage. We offer two internationally-recognised qualifications for new and aspiring professionals or those advancing to the next stage of their career.

Global qualification framework

Putting workplace safety into mainstream education requires internationally recognised standards and competency frameworks. IOSH's professional qualification structure provides a proven model. It shows how safety education can be systematically integrated into educational systems worldwide.

  1. International standards for competence

    The IOSH Level 3 Certificate and Level 6 Diploma are mapped to internationally recognised competency standards. This is underpinned by the IOSH competency framework. It sets out the knowledge, skills and behaviours expected of health and safety professionals at every career stage.

    They provide a universal framework for safety capability development. These qualifications work across diverse legal, cultural and industrial contexts.

    This includes manufacturing sectors in Asia and construction industries in the Middle East. It also covers healthcare systems in Europe and extractive industries across Africa and the Americas.

  2. Cross-border knowledge and international safety standards

    The qualifications integrate international legal frameworks, International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards. They include global compliance requirements. This is essential for multi-national organisations and the increasingly mobile global workforce.

  3. Scalable delivery for educational institutions worldwide

    An expanding international network of approved study centres spans multiple continents. Flexible delivery formats include classroom-based, online distance learning and hybrid models. These accommodate diverse educational infrastructures in both developed and developing economies.

  • Associate member

Supporting UN sustainable development goals (SDGs)

IOSH’s qualification framework links to SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) and SDG 4 (quality education). It demonstrates how systematic occupational safety and health education can be delivered at scale. This works across developed and developing economies.

Develop your skills with IOSH

This policy position represents IOSH's view as of March 2026 based on the best evidence available to us. We will review it periodically and reserve the right to change and update it drawing on new information.