Introduction

The recent BSA (Boarding Schools’ Association) webinar “Communicating in a Crisis” (on 2nd June 2025) was curated by Nick Richardson (Director of Marketing Advisers for Schools and the DES platform), in collaboration with crisis and risk specialist Rob Palfrey of Minerva SRM, and special guest Eugene du Toit, the Master of Haileybury School.

Session Overview

With a number of schools in attendance, the session provided a rare opportunity to:

• Hear a lived military experience and a response perspective around behaviour (from Rob)
• Understand how a real crisis involving a school was handled (from Eugene)
• Gain practical tools and templates that schools can use immediately (from Nick and the DES team)

The objective of the session was to provide schools with clear, actionable insights and practical support to prepare for – and manage – the unexpected.

Speaker Line-up (in order of appearance):

• Nick, Director of Marketing Advisers for Schools & the DES platform, opened the session by sharing digital response tools and templates from the 11-page Crisis Communications Resource Pack, including how DES supports real-time digital coordination across channels like social media, email, and school websites.
• Rob Palfrey, a seasoned social risk management expert and former British Army officer, outlined a seven-step crisis response timeline, from Alert through to Review, and shared the structures schools must have in place to respond effectively and authoritatively.
• Eugene du Toit, Master at Haileybury (and former Deputy Head at Trinity school, Croydon during the 2016 Croydon Tram disaster), closed the session with a personal and powerful story of leading command during a real-life crisis. Nearly a decade on, his reflections highlighted the importance of calm leadership, clear command structures, and human resilience under pressure.