Child unwell on school trip

@G172125 i don’t understand peoples behaviour towards you. The teachers are there to look after the children and a sick child and a mum contacting me concerned about a child would absolutely have me leaving the queue to go and see.

I hope your son is ok

Haven't read the full thread (I know) but as a Mum of a year 11 DS I am amazed they have a school trip right now when it's GCSEs in May

Just seen his age. Can i change my vote?

I would definitely not be impressed. He is still only 16 in a strange country and being sick in a toilet. Would anyone as a mum just leave them to it. ? I know I wouldn’t. A teacher should have gone to check on him. After all if they didn’t think they needed teachers then why do teachers go.

i would check facts and then call school.
I hope he is ok.

Are you kidding?
Have you ever been a teacher taking young folk abroad?
Holiday my arse
He's 16 ffs

Yeah I’d have a word with the school.

Most teachers are hardworking and lovely people, and hate school trips but do them because it’s part of the deal.

Some teachers are however lazy sadists who view school trips as a free holiday.

Some teachers even have major mental health problems and passionately hate the kids in their care.

I’ve known all of these kinds of teachers. I don’t know which type picked up the phone to your son OP but perhaps you do. Unless there had been a clear misunderstanding, I would be expressing my disappointment to the head.

I’d also be worried about why your DS wasn’t with a group of friends who looked after him / fetched help when he fell ill. Seems weird.

Current year 11s were year 7 in 2020.

My DS did one residential in yr6, then went on a football trip in year 9. That's all he's done. It obviously depends on the schools. Not all kids would be involved with guiding/ scouts either.

This.

There would always be a teacher there to support a young person who felt unwell on any trip I've accompanied. A 16yo is not an adult.

To be fair in that situation I'd have called a colleague and asked them to go.

I'm not sure what you would do to "take this further".

How is your DS now? Has he stopped vomiting? Has he been taken back to the hotel? Is he sharing a room with another child (I wouldn't want to be that other child!).

I would want to know what the risk assessment was regarding a child brining I'll, and would ask if procedure was followed. It probably was, and then I'd thank the staff for looking after my I'll child. I'd probably give them all a bottle of Prosecco to help them recover.

And as a parent of DC who refused to revise at home I love that the school has allowed Y11s to go to Disney. My DCs school had them in extra revision sessions over the holidays.

I agree.
I feel for you OP. No matter who's in the wrong or right here, at the end of the day you've had a distressing call from your DS who is away in a different country and that's really tough.
I hope he's OK and gets back to you soon.

I bet most people wouldn't like their 16 year olds in a foreign country on their own whilst throwing up. I should like to think that this would be more important than queuing up for a ride even if its with a child with SEN

@G172125 where is he now? And do you know WhatsApp is down for a lot of us?

When your son called you to say the teacher was not going to come check on him, did you message/call the teacher and say 'I'm really worried, could someone go and make sure he is ok'?

None of us can answer this question, which is why you need to speak to the school and find out what happened.

It's not a great example, but my dd has told me her dad wouldn't pick her up and she was forced to walk home, and when I've checked with him, she's actually said to him, "Will you come?" and he's said "Yes, in half an hour when I finish work" and dd replied, "It's fine, I'll walk." and then relayed to me that he wouldn't come and made her walk. Not that he had said he would but she'd just have to wait.

Anyway, point of that is, had I just accepted her version, which was true to HER, then I'd have been really pissed at her dad, but after I asked him, then her, she said, "Well, yes, I did say that, because he wouldn't come!" and we then had a conversation about the full exchange.

You need the information, then decide what to do.

Most 16 year olds would have done several residentials by now, even with Covid. My daughter did one in year 2, and will be doing in year 4 and year 6. At 8 years old she has also already done 4 residentials with girlguiding over past 2 years, so by end of junior school will have done over a dozen.

For current year 11's covid would have started when in year 8 I think? So would have only missed them in 2020-2011/years 8 and 9? We restarted residentials late 2021.

I don't know why people are being so mean, Op. Bet if it was their 16 year olds they wouldn't be saying the same. He's 16, a minor under the care of the school. He is their responsibility. It must be horrible being ill on a school trip then to top it, he is left alone. Poor lad. I am totally against helicopter and pandering parents but Op you definitely aren't being unreasonable to be concerned. It's not like you can go and pick him up.

Ours posts all sorts! A couple months ago it was one teachers 50th and another’s 40th. All the teachers went to the races and put photos of them clearly pissed on the schools fb page

As lots of people (including me) have said, there are many reasons why that particular teacher may not have been able to come right then.

For me I was queueing with a disabled child (I wouldn't go on most rides by personal choice!) and I couldn't leave them.

As others have said, there is also a duty rota on residentials because it's illegal not to have breaks in working hours - and that stands even on trips.

This is why you need more information, because at the moment you've not got the full picture, and, in the words of QEII, "Recollections may vary."

Obviously if it happened exactly as your son said, then yes, raise a complaint with the school. But get the full picture first - I've had plenty of experience of parents going off half cocked, and then having to show what ACTUALLY happened, and people who feel unwell understandably feel and interpret things differently to when they don't.

Ridiculous isn’t it? People actually taking the piss because a distraught 16yo, sick and alone in a foreign country called his mum. There’s a failsafe way to find which ‘side’ is being unreasonable, and that’s to imagine the replies if it was written from the other perspective. Just imagine if it was ‘I am the designated teacher,with the emergency contact no who is responsible for a group of children we have taken abroad. One has just phoned me to say he’s feeling extremely sick, is in pain and vomiting. His group has left him and he’s sat on a bench alone, needing assistance. However I’m stood in a queue for a ride I fancy going on. Aibu for leaving him on his own for 2 hours so I can go on the ride’. They’d get fucking torn apart!

Having had two parents as teachers I know first hand that these trips are not a holiday and are hard work 24/7. But for those who are saying he is 16 he should be fine, remember these are covid kids, they'll have missed earlier school trips experiencing being away from parents. My daughter is 16 and missed all the end of junior/ start of senior school trips so I would not necessarily expect her to be the same as I was at that age.

My school had a Disney land trip too also coming up to exam season funnily enough but for year 13