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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

School tour aborted, kids now due back at 2:30am. Overreaction?

211 replies

Encolere · 05/03/2019 22:24

My 16 year old is on a school trip. They left on Sunday and were due back tomorrow evening. They were having a great time. After dinner this evening they were told some (unnamed) kids were caught with illegal substances and they were all to pack up immediately to be shipped home. They are a 5 hour drive away and will now get in at 2:30 am. I, and most other parents, have to be up a few hours later for work.

AIBU to think this is an extreme reaction? It was a small number (I presume) of the 40 or so kids on the trip. There was no mention of any of the other students being in danger nor were the police involved as far as we know. If the schools previous MO for dealing with incidents like this are to go by, this will never be mentioned again and the kids involved will remain anonymous.

It is probably revelvant that this school group have been trouble from their first year in secondary. Despite the majority of the group being well behaved they are always (all) in trouble because of the actions of those few who are lacking in the cop on department.

OP posts:
pallisers · 05/03/2019 22:51

I can see both sides tbh.

DD is going on an exchange which is more like a tour next month (they stay with kids from the school but essentially do their own stuff together with teachers during the day). At the meeting it was made clear to us that if a student did something illegal and were arrested the school couldn't protect them and if they were caught with drugs, alcohol etc etc (list given), the parents would be expected to come and get the student or the student would be sent home at the expense of the parents. No question of everyone't tour being cut short.

But that said if it is a question of coming home one day early within the same country I can see how the teachers thought forget trying to police this shower let's get the bus on the road a day early. It is still unfair on the ones who did nothing.

I would be asking the principal why this toxic environment has been allowed to continue in this school and why your child was potentially exposed to drugs and had his tour cut short. I would not let it be swept under the carpet.

OddBodsAndGladRags · 05/03/2019 22:51

Is it possible the drugs find was at their accommodation and the owners said they had to leave?

clairemcnam · 05/03/2019 22:53

This is the kind of thing venues throw groups out for.
And if they stayed, it is a safeguarding issue, as the teachers can not be sure there are other kids with drugs they don't know about. So yes they have to cut it short.

humpydumpybumpy · 05/03/2019 22:53

Our schools have a policy that the kids who create the problem must be shipped home or picked up no matter where they have travelled to by their parents/guardians. There are signed forms right at the beginning of the venture, and the parents must agree to it. It means that parents (and sometimes students, who work to afford trips) shelling out a lot of money for trips, and the well behaved students are not penalized by the foolish ones that do something that goes against the rules. I think its is a great idea. When they all lose out it just doesn't make any sense.

thedisorganisedmum · 05/03/2019 22:55

I can see the point of the school, it's not an unreasonable decision.

I do have sympathy for the parents with young children, who will have to wake up the little ones to go and pick up the older one from his school trip in the middle of the night! (and it's rather chilly at this time of year).

Bugsymalonemumof2 · 05/03/2019 22:55

It sounds like the whole group have been asked to leave.

PennyMordauntsLadyBrain · 05/03/2019 23:00

I don’t get why the troublesome crowd were allowed to go in the first place?

When my school planned residential trips it was made clear that only students who could be relied upon to behave appropriately would be allowed to go. In the months leading up to the trip, behaviour was monitored and repeated poor conduct at school would mean that your spot on the trip was revoked.

GrumpyMummy123 · 05/03/2019 23:02

I'd say it's likely the last straw in series of bad behaviour or they've been asked to leave.
Although I still don't think it's unreasonable. Annoying, especially for parents and those that did nothing wrong but quite sensible to just pack up and come home given illegal activities were a happening. That's pretty serious stuff!

thedisorganisedmum · 05/03/2019 23:03

repeated poor conduct at school would mean that your spot on the trip was revoked.

sounds like an excellent solution, but I can already hear the screams of horror about this "discrimination"

Pinkbells · 05/03/2019 23:06

The thing to do would be to send the offending children home via their parents, not the innocent ones! Very unfair on them.

Ginseng1 · 05/03/2019 23:07

See attitudes like 'I'll be asking the principle why drugs were prevalent on school trip' is exactly why if it was me (as a teacher) I'd be packing the lot of them up to go home. They might have caught couple kids but how do they know there are not more & if anything happens no matter what forms were signed the parents blame the teachers why did they 'allow' it.

BlackAmericanoNoSugar · 05/03/2019 23:09

I also would have expected them to call the parents of the children concerned and arranged for them to be picked up early. But five hours is a pretty long time to wait for the parents (although a car would probably do in four hours what a coach does in five) and then the parents would be driving home in the early hours which might not be safe. I'm guessing they're either in Donegal or Kerry as it's hard to drive for five hours in Ireland without running into the sea. As a previous poster has said, it might also be the venue that has a policy of excluding the whole group for this sort of thing. Such a shame.

PennyMordauntsLadyBrain · 05/03/2019 23:09

I see what you mean thedisorganisedmum.

This was the 2000’s though, when saying “unfortunately setting fire to a sanitary bin in the science block precludes you from taking part in the second year trip to Disneyland Paris” wasn’t a controversial thing for a teacher to say.

Leeds2 · 05/03/2019 23:09

Do they know who the "guilty" students are? Will those students be expelled?
I'd like to think that if I was a teacher on this trip, I would send home the guilty parties to be met by their parents, accompanied by a teacher, and leave the rest to enjoy the last day of their trip. But I suspect the teachers have had enough, and I can't say that I blame them!

PennyMordauntsLadyBrain · 05/03/2019 23:12

It’s all well and good saying you’d send the guilty ones home, but staff ratios probably mean that there wouldn’t be enough teachers to cover supervising the poorly behaved students on an unplanned journey home while leaving enough staff with the rest of the pupils for the remainder of the trip.

MsPavlichenko · 05/03/2019 23:14

Whilst expecting parents to collect may be a plan, in reality it cannot be enforced. Sending them home in a smaller group impacts the staff pupil ratio left behind.

I expect , more to the point, they were asked/ told to go by the accomodation.

blue25 · 05/03/2019 23:14

We've been told that pupils are not allowed to be left off school trips due to disability discrimination. It basically means not many trips happen in our school TBH.

HollowTalk · 05/03/2019 23:15

My friend's school has a big summer treat, like going to Alton Towers. If a pupil gets into any real trouble in the year, they're not allowed on the trip. The problem is that if they're in trouble and banned in September, there is no incentive to behave for the rest of the year. If they're forgiven and allowed on the trip, there's no incentive for anyone to not be naughty at the start of the year. It's a nightmare for her.

BlackAmericanoNoSugar · 05/03/2019 23:17

DS's school (also Ireland) does have a section on the trip form that says that bad behaviour at school before the trip will prevent them from being taken on the trip and that the deposit (and possibly the whole fee) might be forfeit.

TrainSong · 05/03/2019 23:20

YANBU. DC's school have a clear policy: if you are caught with any illegal substance on a school trip you are sent home immediately. The rest of the group stay on the trip. It has happened. They don't punish the innocent. Why would they?

Original poster
Encolere · 05/03/2019 23:22

I don’t get why the troublesome crowd were allowed to go in the first place?

The information from the school said only the best behaved would be allowed go. Obviously that wasn't the case. Honestly as I saw the teachers boarding the coach on Sunday I felt for them. And I do feel for them now, i cannot imagine how they got them to volunteer for this.

I never thought about the accommodation asking them to leave. That is possible. I would have thought they'd have called the police though in that case (my school did that to scare some students when I was at school - it terrified me, I'm not sure it had much impact on the guilty though)

I'd put money on it that the parents of the idiots with the drugs are furious about this disruption to their night.

It's the only school for 50 miles, i don't think expulsion is ever an option as aren't all children entitled to an education?

OP posts:
cantkeepawayforever · 05/03/2019 23:22

So they will be home about 15-16 hours earlier than planned?

It is likely to be a combination of

  • Staff not being willing to take responsibility for the group overnight under the circumstances. I would not be prepared to do so if I were to be the most senior member of staff in charge.
  • Parents of the guilty children not being guaranteed to pick them up. They would, after all, also arrive round about 2.30 am at the tour location, and I wouldn't care to be the member of staff who sorted out the handover to angry parents at that hour and then supervised the rest of the group for the rest of the day. If the head, for example, drove to the tour location to deal with this, this would be 10 hours of their time to gain only 16 hours more of the trip for the rest of the party
  • The point in the tour - it's not as if this was the first night
  • Staffing ratios if some staff brought the guilty children home. Any staff leaving would usually leave a school trip under numbers, and there would probably need to send several staff members with the offending group.
  • Accommodation throwing the whole group out (entirely reasonable, tbh)
ilovesooty · 05/03/2019 23:22

I imagine those staff who arrive home so late will have to be in school first thing too.

dustarr73 · 05/03/2019 23:31

Im Irish and to be fair i think thats the best way to go.Its not like someone blocked a toilet.There are drugs involved.Teachers have to think of the wider picture.

If they let it go,and then someone gets ill or ods then they are the ones in charge.And then they basically get it in the neck.Teachers cant win.

BlackAmericanoNoSugar · 05/03/2019 23:32

To be fair to the school letting children go who are a bit troublesome, I think that there is often a reason for it and the teachers hope that the trip will improve the lives or outlook of the children a bit. It's very dedicated of them to keep trying with difficult children.

DS has autism and can be a total nightmare, and for this trip I did talk to the school and say that if they didn't want him to go DH and I would tell DS that it was our decision not to let him go and not the school's in order to foster a good relationship between DS and the school. But we all know that it's the type of activity that DS will love so the teachers taking the trip are prepared to give it a go and I'm very grateful to them. (I'm also going to book a hotel nearby and take DS overnight because that way everyone has a reasonable chance of getting some sleep.)