School trip tragedy - prosecutors trying to overturn not guilty verdict of teachers

My friend is doing a school trip and she was refused another colleague because of money, and after a LOT of asking she was allowed to take a dinner lady, because of £££. No school will give money to staff a trip to have a 1:2 ratio.

"Not enough adults per child is to blame here. 1 adult per 2 children would be appropriate here since it’s water

Yep I well remember the days doing swimming lessons in school when there were 15 teachers and lifeguards in the pool with us.

Parents would be delighted to hear there were so many teachers going on a school trip to France they were paying for I'm sure.

FFs get a grip.

It's as I have always said, if an accident occurs when parents are in charge of a couple of children it's a tragedy, if the same thing occurs when a few teachers are in charge of a large number of children is a cause for blame. How many parents have been prosecuted under similar circumstances to these?

This. A pontoon that regularly flips seems hazardous. And it is not an appropriate place for school children!

I am not against school trips (not at all). But swimming in a lake is associated with risks. And I am not sure I’d be comfortable with those (especially as a teacher).

edit: and I haven’t read enough about this case to know whether the child to teacher ratio was appropriate. Or if those teachers had lifeguard training!

Ok, but would you expect a teacher to check and get a ride in every single pontoon before the trip or what?

Did you do the field work unsupervised?

Not enough adults per child is to blame here. 1 adult per 2 children would be appropriate here since it’s water.

When my boy 8 years old moved up a level at swimming he panicked when he couldn’t feel the bottom of the pool. He sank under the water from exhaustion and didn’t resurface. I noticed before the swimming teacher who had briefly turned around to respond to someone else. They got him out of the pool but he was traumatised and couldn’t go swimming for a year.

Never take your eyes off your child when they are in water

The minimum ratio for this is 1 adult to 8 children. The group had 1 adult to 8 children plus a lifeguard. It is usual to have some adults out of the water to watch what is happening and respond. Whether you have more adults than this depends on the conditions, the children's swimming ability and ability to follow any rules. I assume the children were confined to a specific marked area, this would be usual so you could keep an eye on them.
The pontoon should not have flipped over.

this is awful. and so saddening to read.

when i was 16 and off to college for A-levels, I chose Biology A-Level. I had to sign a piece of paper to tell the college that I agree to go on a class field trip to Somerset as part of my A-Level coursework. If I didn't go, I wouldn't get my A-level because the trip was mandatory. I realised later as I became more mature that it was just a free week off for teachers while A-Level biology students sludged through dirty water and swaps, pretending to examine insects and whatnot.

Yes you are right. The Daily Mail has billed it as "French prosecutors begin fight to overturn decision to clear three British teachers over the manslaughter of Jessica Lawson, 12" but that's not actually what it is. The Daily Mail does have a strong anti teacher bias. It suits them to encourage their readers to direct their anger at teachers rather than the government for running state education into the ground.

From a quick Google this looks far from resolved. Criminal charges could still follow. Unfortunately funding cuts mean H&S investigating teams are often stretched to the limit so it can be years before a prosecution is brought , but the council could absolutely bring a criminal prosecution and may well do so. I can also see that the site where it happened has now permanently closed.

That news article just related to the opening of the inquest

I think it's a fair point OP. There was a young girl who sadly drowned in a water park in Berkshire 2 years ago, for example. There wasn't any criminal investigation into it, just a H&S one by the council. If it had been teachers supervising a school trip rather than her family taking her, I can't see why it should be different.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-66646983#:~:text=An%2011%2Dyear%2Dold%20girl,and%20an%20investigation%20was%20launched.

Put it this way - we had twenty kids with 4 teachers in with them - 1:5, and this was a pool not open swimming.

3:24 is appalling. That’s watching 8 kids, and they obviously won’t be together all the time. If they can’t up the ratios (with lifeguards) then they should not have done the activity. My kidd are teenagers, but I still watch them in water. It takes seconds to drown

No, it's not irrelevant. I am a teacher. Been in education three decades including multiple trips abroad and doing the risk assessments for the trips/itineraries.
You wouldn't have only one swimmer with 24 students in the water/only one lifeguard on the side.
Even with two colleagues as lookouts with whistles to call out for horseplay/splashing, it's not a good ratio for that particular activity.

I wasn’t saying it was the teachers’ fault. I’m sure they’re blaming themselves regardless.

I agree.
Obviously a tragedy for the family, and also for the teaching staff.

BUT

Those teachers will have been living with this tragedy even day for the last 10 years nearly and it will live with them for the rest of their lives I expect.

It was not their fault. Potentially the activity Centre might have had a case to answer in terms of procedures for the lifeguard reporting their concerns, but each of those teachers will be completely broken. It took YEARS for the case to finally acquit them. It is unbelievable that there is any possibility that they might have to go through it all again.

Sadly, accidents happen. Tragedies like this are very very rare, but totally ruin the lives of all involved, not just the family. Criminalising the people who volunteered to run the trip in the first place helps no-one.

It’s irrelevant the teacher being in the water… in fact they’d have been better off supervising out of the water.

3-24 ratio is fine. As along as each supervisor knows who they are watching/is in their group.

Teachers get the blame for everything.

Maybe I can help here since I know a little bit about the French legal system, and I have been reading the local press reports, which have been written in a less sensational way than those in the Mail (quelle surprise). For example https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/nouvelle-aquitaine/haute-vienne/limoges/noyade-d-une-fillette-britannique-a-liginiac-en-juillet-2015-le-proces-en-appel-de-cinq-personnes-2977553.html

In the French system, formally, the search is for the truth, as opposed to two opposing sides presenting the best possible view of the case. Of course, there are lawyers on both sides, but they are notionally committed to finding out the truth of what happened.

The first trial basically ended with shrugged shoulders. The court was unable to determine whether — and if so, to what extent — the death was the fault of the teachers, the lifeguard, or the people in charge of the equipment, so no blame was assigned.

The dead girl's parents appealed, demanding a new trial (to have another go at finding the truth) with different judges, and that's what's happening now. Again, the teachers are not the only ones being judged here; so are the lifeguard and the local town hall (collectively), who were responsible for the pontoon.

From what I've read I think it's unlikely that anything concrete will be established, and even less likely that the teachers will be held responsible (and even more unlikely that the teachers would be the only people held responsible). Even if they are, however, they will serve no jail time. The prosecution has suggested (from the start) that the appropriate punishment would be a suspended sentence. Still something you don't want on your record, but it would serve no great purpose to actually put them (or the lifeguard) in prison.

I think this is a tragedy on a couple of levels. Not just the death of the girl, but also the perhaps understandable inability of the parents to let it go, and the subsequent drama affecting the lives of multiple people. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to me that there is anything unreasonable about what is happening, given that this is how things work in France. The parents are entitled to ask for this, and so it's happening. We can criticise them for that, but most of us haven't lost a child in tragic circumstances. Maybe they just want closure, and would be happy if the court decided that it was all the fault of the lifeguard, or the town hall when it had the pontoon built X years ago -- I haven't seen any evidence for the OP's comment that the parents specifically want the teachers to be found responsible.

I'm a languages teacher and I've had some very rude emails from parents berating me for no longer running trips. I ran a trip a few years ago and 3 children took ill and I found it extremely stressful. I don't like the responsibility, especially since having my own children. I won't run any further trips.

I've swum with kids abroad before. The ratio 1:24 in the water is not one we'd have ever done.
Yes, it was a tragic accident but in spite of that, only one teacher actually in the water with them all is a risk in itself, which should have been avoided.

Tragedies don't just happen abroad, see the recent mud slide and a couple of years ago didn't a girl die in a UK theme park on a school trip?

I agree, the 24 pupils to 1 teacher in the water is, in my view, really poor. This, to me, definitely puts some, not all, onus on the teachers. I absolutely don’t see teachers as having a jolly. I think these trips are horribly stressful and there’s rarely enough staff support in ANY setting. I don’t blame the teachers but they absolutely hold some degree of responsibility.

I think relatives say things in pain and anger and want revenge, which is understandable when they are grieving, but the important thing is that this shouldn't influence the justice process.