4yo left behind on nursery trip?!

[Inyourwildestdreams]

Have just read an article about a 4yo in Fife who was left behind at a wildlife park when on a nursery trip (DM article so I won’t link it!).

All kids had been told to go to the toilet before going back on the bus, he’d been last in the queue and when he came out they had left.
I believe another park visitor alerted park staff that there was a child alone and they then contacted the nursery staff who made the journey back to collect him. They hadn’t even noticed he was gone!

3 staff to 9 kids. How on Earth does something like that happen?! Poor child must have been so worried!

The nursery is only 25 minutes from the Deer centre so they must have been nearly back to have taken 40 minutes to return!

Also I’d be asking if all the adults were sat at the front of the bus. Otherwise how did none of them spot the empty seat - that wasn’t empty on the way there - on their way to their own seats?

@endofthelinefinally I’d like to hope so but I have no idea what would justify it!

@ARichtGoodDram I was thinking that about the timings too. I’d read that he was away from nursery staff for a total of 40 minutes. I’m assuming that’s loading kids into the bus, setting off then returning when they got the phonecall!

I bet they didn’t allocate the children to specific adults. Other than something random like another child falling or being sick distracted the adult in charge of his group that’s the only way it’s been missed imo.

i had one school that I worked in that did that on trips and I hated it because it felt so so much less controlled than “that’s your 4, that’s your 4 and they’re my 4” trips.

The nursery in our old village (which we thankfully opted not to use) went out for a day trip and left a 2 year old alone locked in the nursery. I think they only realised 3 hours later when they returned. It was because they didn’t maintain a register of what children were there each day, if you can imagine.

They somehow got given another chance to prove they could rectify their errors and were allowed to remain open. Ofsted did another surprise visit a month or two later and they still weren’t keeping a register! They were shut immediately.

It’s down to shoddy record keeping and poor management.

That said, at that age, they would all be in car seats. Did no one notice the empty car seat where a child should have been?!

The BBC article says they got back to the Deer centre 40 minutes after being alerted by staff. So I think he’d have been away from the nursery staff for at least 50 minutes - by the time he was spotted by staff or alerted them, they worked out what group he belonged to and realised that group was gone, and found a contact number for them.

I nearly left a child behind going from one zoo enclosure to another on a playscheme trip. I did a head count and all was good, then as we started to move a Dad shouted on his child who’d migrated toward my group and was walking out with us.

I’ve never forgotten the panic and thankfully the other child was right there. Groups were smaller from that day and all the kids got hi vis jackets. Much harder to lose them, and much easier to find them!

Being one child short should never happen though. That’s just unreal.

@mindutopia reading your comment made me shudder. That is absolutely horrifying and could change and scar a child for life. Awful and unimaginable!!!

This happened to my younger brother once, left in a national park! Him and the pal he'd been left with tried to walk home bless them, ended up getting picked up by someone who knew my mam. The school didn't even realise the coach had left without them. No register or headcount when they arrived back to school either - if mam's pal hadn't seen the boys they'd probably still be walking home today.

The school tried to blame the boys too, said they'd "wandered off" and it was their own fault they got left. Called my mam to inform her my brother would be in detention the rest of the week for his "irresponsible behaviour". What I would have paid to see the head's face after my mam went in, apparently she ripped seven shades of shit out of him.

I doubt they were in car seats. It’s not a legal requirement on a minibus.

I would assume that they’d have strapped children in if they were in car seats and it would have been obvious one was empty.

Just putting on seat belts wouldn’t highlight a missing child, and the kids would all be lower down and harder to see from another seat so you wouldn’t get that sudden “shit where is X” when you glanced across and there was no wee head.

When I read this story earlier today, I also thought what were the toilet arrangements? In a public visitors centre, presumably using general toilets or using a single one allocated- did they go off to the toilet on their own in a public visitors centre? If so, why? If using individual toilet between them all, why was no adult waiting right outside the door or within sight? It’s really quite a distressing story all round.

I love red hair so this isnt meant negatively to the little fella.

But unless all 9 had bright ginger how would you not noticed he was missing?!

Are they allowing 4 year olds use public toilets unsupervised? Never know who is lurking