Powering safety education

Primary launched Electricity Safety Week (ESW) 25 years ago in NSW and 10 years ago in QLD to address gaps in children’s electrical safety awareness. Now a long-term behaviour change program, ESW is delivered for Ausgrid, and Endeavour Energy and Energy Queensland via public, private/independent, Catholic, and home schools. Its key goals are to boost school participation, improve children’s electrical safety behaviours, and prevent electricity-related injuries or deaths. 

Child safety behavioural research shaped ESW’s original school-based strategy, targeting 9–11 year-olds as the priority group and 5–8 year-olds as a secondary focus. 

Primary has been collaborating with education stakeholders to develop and provide free, curriculum-aligned safety activities and teaching resources. The program is continuously updated to remain relevant, including resources for children with special needs introduced in 2019, interactive at home resources during Covid-19, Scratch coding games and virtual excursions.   

Key elements of the program annually include:  

• Developing innovative, curriculum-aligned teaching tools (print, online, multimedia) and resources with content aligned to the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education, and key curriculum outcomes for Science, Drama, English and Mathematics.  

• Producing and distributing resource packs to registered schools, featuring a lesson booklet (K–6), STEM design challenges, a circuit kit, student prizes, posters, and stickers.  

• Engaging schools directly through direct outreach via our call centre.  

• Coordinating school visits by energy network staff for community engagement.  

• Gathering stakeholder feedback to refine the program.

In 2024, ESW achieved new milestones

For ESW 2024, Primary partnered with curriculum experts to align materials with the Australian Curriculum v.9. We created new activities and integrated safety messages on renewable energy sources.  

We also: 

• Registered almost 4000 schools (96% of schools across NSW and QLD) through direct outreach.  

• Coordinated 186 in-school presentations, reaching 8,400 students with interactive demonstrations.  

• Received strong engagement feedback from teachers on program effectiveness with many schools adopting long-term safety initiatives such as Electricity Safety Monitors.  

ESW has evolved from a small, localised campaign into a comprehensive ongoing educational initiative, adapting to curriculum changes, such as the NSW Science curriculum update and helping maintain a strong child safety record. 

The program serves as a case study in how stakeholder partnerships and research-led insights can intersect to create long-term engagement and purpose-driven campaigns. 

In 2025, Electricity Safety week will run from 1 to 5 September. Find out about Electricity Safety Week (NSW) and the Safety Heroes (QLD) programs here.