All the educational institutions, be it schools, colleges, universities etc. form the backbone of any economy or country. Without an effective and robust education system, an economy will face severe problems in the future. Managing this sector seems like a very simple task. But being engaged or employed in or running an educational institution is not bereft of the due and mandatory compliance requirements and rules that it has to cater and adhere to. Nowadays running an educational institution is almost as complicated as running a small town or a city. With the expanding range of various complex central, state and local regulations, it is high time now that educational institutions also start taking care regarding the various compliance requirements that they have to maintain else they stand a risk of being counted among the institutions that are non-compliant and might be forced to shut-down.

For an education institution to be compliant it will have to follow various things, firstly, it should have a proper document listing out the policies and procedures that the institution has to comply with. It has to maintain proper standards of compliance which will reflect the institution’s commitment to compliance. This should be done with the size and structure of the institution in mind. After this, it should develop a programming oversight of the compliances and appoint a compliance officer to ensure that the standards of compliance are met. After this, the institution should take steps to ensure that the people of the institution are trained and educated regarding the compliance requirements of the particular college, university or school. It does this by stating that the Responsible Persons of a school must have in place and implement policies and procedures that describe their school's:

1. legal compliance process to facilitate the school's compliance with all relevant legislation and reduce any risk of non-compliance; and
2. risk management framework or plan for developing, implementing and reviewing risk management strategies in relation to strategic direction, governance, operations and finance and the associated risk register.

These are the following rules the management shall follow while mapping out the compliance procedure:

1. The relationship between compliance and governance, risk, audit, legal, environment and health and safety.
2. Clear definition of the scope of the compliance management system i.e. does it include compliance with organisational policies and contractual obligations, as well as legal obligations.
3. An improvement to the link between risk and compliance, so that compliance risks are clearly identified and effective controls implemented.
4. The strengthening of principles of transparency and effective management reporting.
5. The development of a healthy culture of compliance and compliance behaviours.
6. Non-government schools are heavily regulated. Not only do most schools need to comply with a detailed set of registration guidelines, against which they are assessed, they are also subject to multiple other legal obligations, not the least being including workplace safety and privacy. These two regulatory regimes have both been recently amended with the regulators being granted 'teeth' to apply to those organisations that don't comply, thus heightening the issue of compliance for schools.

These are the compliance checklist that a school has to follow: