Teacher's family accompanying school trip

[Trifle]

DS1 (age 13) went on a school trip today to the zoo. One of the 6 teachers accompanying the 104 children on the trip took his wife and two young children.

Does anyone know what the legal ratio of teachers to children is for this age?

I think it is highly unprofessional to do this as the teacher spent the majority of time with his family and not supervising the children.

If the ratio is 1:17 then he should have been acting as a teacher first and foremost. If it is 1:20 then, fine, but really, a day off at the zoo just because a school trip happens to be going somewhere fun for his kids.

I'm pretty peeved at this as I had to pay for the trip and wonder if I am paying for his family too.

What would you do ?

But Worry, if the teacher is to help them out of the zoo individually in case of fire, wouldn't they have to walk around all day in a group closely supervised, like 6yos? Otherwise how could he get to them all when the lion escaped?

Surely this is not an efficient way of teaching 13yos on a field trip?

Have you ever been to a secondary school? They are not constantly under the eyes of a teacher, they are often allowed to leave school at lunchtime at this age, and they usually make their own way there.

What a ridiculous thread!!

So a teacher is kind enough to agree to take your children on trips at no extra pay, and whom without the trip may not happen and you're pissed off because he brought his wife and kids who he woulda paid for? She was another unpaid adult helping with your kids say thank u ffs.

And as for this "my dh can't taker with him" stuff? How bloody selfish you would wish to inflict that on others . Sour grapes much..... Well they do say misery loves company.

Why shouldn't his family go with them to SA.? You do know that that teacher is doing this in his own time? Teachers are not paid 24 hrs a day?
The family will have paid for themselves you seem to have an agenda
As for the zoo. You won't have paid for the teacher to go either, they will have been offered free teacher places as all organisations do as they want school trips there. Students never pay for the teachers places. ( however loads of teachers pay for the kids that their parents cba or can't pay for places so that the kids don't miss out.
I reckon I have paid over £100 last term for kids to go on trips out of my own money so they don't miss out

No, of course I dont expect a group of 13 year olds to be closely supervised. My youngest is now 13 so I am quite aware of teenagers' needs and wants for supervision.

Not a lot is likely to go wrong but in the event of an emergency would a teacher's mind be on the students or his family? On the whole I would prefer to know whether my DCs were going on a school trip or a family trip.

All too often industrial accidents occur because concerns about safety got ignored or ridiculed.

FFS, his wife was there with the kids - I'm sure he could have left her to supervise his DC whilst he did his job

This is why I have actually stopped running trips. I have never once had a thank you from parents or staff for giving up my own time and everyone has a criticism.

I fact this is one of the reasons I am also considering leaving teaching. The constant criticism when I am working my backside off

Are people really suggesting that in an emergency the teachers won't be doing all they could to help ALL the kids to the best of their ability because their family is there?

Were his children dangerous?

and if you are really concerned about adult to child ratio, then wouldn't his wife being there improve things?

In an emergency, the zoo staff would be in charge, they would know the fire evacuation procedure, the phone number of the lion tamer, whatever. They would be dealing with it.

The point here I think is that there is actually an adult there (the wife) to look after the teacher's children, so he can concentrate on the students. They will have thought about the job division beforehand.

Of course, they may be on his mind, but then he could be worrying about them any time- that doesn't stop him from doing his job even in the case of an accident. I have gone in to work when I knew my dd was suicidal- didn't stop me from doing the job I was paid to do.

We have frequently travelled on the ships where my brother was a helmsman: it didn't once occur to us (or to him) that in a case of accident he might abandon his part in the evacuation routine to rush to find his family: as a professional you just don't do that. Or rather, if you do do it you can expect to find yourself in a similar place to the captain of the Costa Concordia: in court and reviled by the international press.

Doctors must sometimes have family members being brought into their hospitals: they don't ditch the patient they are operating on to rush off to find them; they just have to trust that whichever member of staff is in charge of their loved one will be doing their job looking after them. As the teacher will have to hope his wife is doing hers.

I don't really think that taking your family to the zoo in work time can be termed " working my backside off" tbh.
I really don't know whether I'd be bothered about this.i know teachers do work hardetc.
But if the point of being there is to supervise the pupils, even as relatively independent teenagers, I would have thought that being woth one's own family would be a distraction from that.
But maybe it doesn't matter.

What noblegiraffe said.

I don't see why a teacher would know more than a 13yo about how to deal with an escaped lion. If it ever happened to me, I'd hope the zoo keeper or, failing that, some of ds' nature minded friends would be around to tell me what to do.

I totally agree Op.

The teachers should have been going round with the children saying things like

"Look children, a lion! What noise does a lion make Susie? That's right: roar! Shall we all roar? Good roaring!'

Oh - hang on a minute - I think I misread your child's age!

Generally I'd say someone who is wandering round with their kids is probably in a good position to keep an eye on everything as there would have been lots of parents with young kids there so he would have been invisible to the average teenager.

One of our teachers used to quite often bring his wife and children. they were lovely, but they always separated from us for the trip and the wife took the children off. Teacher reckoned it improved the behaviour of the pupils on the trip too having small ones around.

I have been reflecting on this overnight.

Not only do I think it is acceptable, I think it is actually a positive thing. My reasoning is that the more human and normal teachers look, with functional personal lives and so on, the better example this sets to the children in their care. It also means that children are more likely to behave well at school and feel the adults giving them instructions have good reasons for doing so, rather than just being quasi factory managers barking commands. So bring it on, I say.

BTW in my non-teaching professional life it has been fine for me to take relatives on business trips as long as there wasn't any extra expense for the company. I have also been taken on company outings and business trips on this basis in the past. Teachers apply the same rules to their own activities. If there's no cost to the school, and it's been properly risk assessed, then it is not seen as a problem and indeed means teachers can organise a lot more trips than they otherwise would have done (bear in mind trips are an optional part of the job).

I used to be part of the team taking the whole of Yr 1O to the zoo every year. (Part of their GCSE coursework.) It may come as a surprise, but our main focus was not to save pupils from the escaped lion but to protect the paying public from the impact of 120 teenagers let loose in the area. Sorting out loud behaviour, acting as a deterrent against shoplifting - that sort of thing.

Wow, dh (an accountant) has recently been asked to work in London more. His work are sorting him out a flat and they have told us the dc (1&2) and myself are welcome to stay whenever we like. It's a good job some employers are more understanding and family friendly than the op!

I think an informal atmos on these days is probably quite nice. I assume DW would have been crb checked as I think that's required for accompanying adults.
But really, I am hearing how it's all terribly demanding and very few ppl are up to the job and these trips are jolly hard work and at the same time nobody needs to be supervising teenagers.
So, which is it?

Ok. Slightly TIC, sorry. But if it's ok to bring family on such a trip maybe it could just be explained as such without the need to take offence at a pretty reasonable question from the OP.

Thyme, you have hit the nail on the head there. When my mum used to take the German exchange at her school, she had to do a little speech on the ferry about how flick knives bought in France and Germany were illegal in the UK, and the kids may wish to drop any such recently purchased items overboard accidentally on purpose, rather than attempt to take them through customs.

It depends on the trip as to how hard work it is. A cricket tour to SA would be very hard work, all that travel, kids away from home, being in a foreign country etc. A day trip to the zoo is a piece of piss in comparison, because the kids normally go off and do their own thing.

I used to do a weekend residential where the teachers organised all the activities, teamwork, a hike, games and so on. That was bloody hard work, you were not only never off duty, you were also jumping about like a mad thing keeping the kids engaged. Then we'd go back to school and teach another full week without having had a break. It was very rare that a parent said thanks, more likely that they'd complain about a lost jumper or whatever.

Boffin - you've just reminded me of something that happened on one of the French trips my father organised. A boy tried to import a beetle in a matchbox because it resembled some potato-eating insect he'd seen on posters in the UK. He wanted to claim the reward.

Really don't see the issue, if there was space on the trip why shouldn't it be offered out to his family, who are after all members of the wider school community. I'd much rather that than places going spare.
I come from a teaching family and as a child regularly went on school trips. It was often either that or my mother wouldn't have been a&e to run the trip at all. She always paid for my place though and I highly doubt in this example that they didn't play for the children at least (she may have been part of the adult ratios?). Really can't see the problem or any detrimental effect this had on the pupils?

As for " Sorry to disagree with most of you MNers but even if his wife was CRB checked, which I doubt she was , YANBU." - we don't know but she may have done. Doesn't matter though as she wasn't undertaking regulated activity so no more needed a DBS/CRB check than anyone else at the zoo that day.

I agree with Boffins comment on making teachers seem more normal and human with families of their own help improve and form children's behaviour. the teacher is demonstrating a good example of family life.

in my dds accident if the girls had inky had the teachers to rely on it would have been catastrophic as one had died while others were critically injured and trapped.

teachers dd and other parents were vital to saving their lives.

the more adults the better really.

to add in an emergency all adults and children do what the emergency services tell you to do when they arrive.

Threalamandaclarke Fri 27-Sep-13 10:08:01

"But really, I am hearing how it's all terribly demanding and very few ppl are up to the job and these trips are jolly hard work and at the same time nobody needs to be supervising teenagers.
So, which is it?"

I'd say from my experience with teenagers (not as a teacher, though the child of a teacher who did take teens abroard) that it's both at the same time.

You cannot and should not supervise them constantly in the way you would smaller children: this is simply not good for them.

Otoh you have to be prepared to exercise your authority in a very effective manner should the need arise.

And you absolutely have to have them believe from the start that you are capable of doing so.

So it's more about being able to impose your personality than about constant little rescue actions. Hard work and not hard work. Like teenagers in general really... Less hard work than a baby- and more hard work.

Less demanding of ratio, more of personality.

Thyme

Luffs kids, you never ever know what they are going to do next.