Child unwell on school trip

[G172125]

My son is currently on a school trip to Disneyland. He started to feel unwell with stomach pains and vomiting. He got split up from he’s group and was left alone in Disney village. I managed to get hold of the teacher to let her know and she said she would go to him. My son then text me and said she said she Can’t go to him because she is queuing for a ride. Nobody bothered to go look for my son for two hours. Aibu to make a complaint about this and take it further?

I went on a trip to Italy in the Easter holidays with school in year 11 ( 29 years ago 😜showing my age) and I got 10 GCSES A-C. You can go away at Easter and do well too!!

My ds was at a very academic school . They went to Poland in Feb half term and he did his Dof E practice expedition in the Easter holidays ( they listened to all of their set books on audio sharing headphones ! ) . The school were always very clear that it was important to get a balance between study and relaxation to avoid burnout and ensure you were healthy for the long haul of exams in the summer term. Two days in Paris is not going to be disastrous . (My son got straight 9s by the way .)

I remember being in exactly the same scenario myself only it was Butlins and I was 8 years old as it was a day trip from a Brownie camp. Remember feeling very frightened but sorted myself out and never told any adult. Different times!

@cyclamenqueen

I guess very academic kids who can get 9s can afford to go on Easter School trips- the caste majority really can’t!

Yeah, to be fair there was also someone calling some teachers lazy psychopaths.

Think his age is an irrelevance here - he is a minor, on a school trip overseas, where the school have a duty of care to look after the children/young people in their care. The school trip fee includes a portion covering their costs because they are working. Without attending to a sick child, how could the know whether it was food poisoning, a bug, or even bloody meningitis. A member of staff should have met him and ensured he was taken back to their accommodation (and notified the parents) and been prepared to contact a doctor if necessary. That is what they are paid to do.

My 15 (recently turned 16yo) suffers severe sudden-onset migraines (pain, projectile vomiting and will be unable stand for the pain, often sobs in distress). We meet with the school prior to trips to ensure medication is carried by both my son and the staff, that a specific member of staff is on call should he be taken sick, with a second in on standby as back up (and yes, he went to Disneyland for a computer studies conference and also a Paris cultural trip with a day at another theme park, so could potentially have been in the same boat as OPs son). He has a direct phone number for both staff members - in fact ALL the children who are old enough to go off in groups without an adult have these staff member’s numbers.

It is beyond shocking that no-one came when contacted, that OP’s son was left alone in a day trip in a foreign country vomiting and being ill. It is absolutely NOT acceptable from the perspective of safeguarding or the schools legal duty of care. I’d be contacting the HT, the governors and making a huge stink.

I do also have one at the opposite end of the academic spectrum with significant additional needs and I don’t think locking him up for the Easter holidays and chaining him up his desk would have helped. He would probably have just refused to do anything and been turned off education completely. It’s really important that they have relaxation in amongst the work, and also that they learn that balance is important two hours of quality is better than two days of rubbish.

Christ 😂😂😂 what a boring response

Bloody is if they are neglecting the duties that make it “not a holiday”

My year 11 and their friends are all busy revising for their exams- a trip to Disney sounds crazy!! His friends shouldn’t have ditched him and they should have a meeting point with a teacher available.

It is unusual though. Dd year 10 on a multi year school trip school expects and assumes no year 11 or 13 would choose to go. Running trips for those year groups at Easter just seems odd to me. No local school state or private round here would do that

Because I want to understand more about the sequence of events (which is so far contradictory and makes little sense) before I blame either the teacher or the student?

My 16yr old would have called me and would have been upset if they were that ill....but I suspect there is some exaggeration around the pain....and possibly the diarrhoea as that was added later. And I recognise that there is clearly more to this than we currently know....and a teachers side.

What on earth is going on on in this thread. I teach so am ‘team teacher’ most of the time but you don’t leave a child (even if they’re 16) to make their own way back to a hotel. You have no idea how ill they could potentially be. You have a duty of care.

OP I’d be angry. You hand your child over and I know damn well I’d not just wonder off and leave my 16 year old feeling awful in a strange place.

It is not OK and I would be raising this.

All the year 11’s around at my son’t school are going on their silver DofE expedition this week - 3 days I think. It’s down to parents to decide whether their children can cope with/benefit from a non-revision break over this period.

Frankly, no child’s exam success or failure should hinge on a 3-4 day break over Easter and for many, if they’ve just spent the last term doing repeated mocks and intense revision, a little stress relieving break right now might do them the world of good.

We have a full day off and one afternoon a week scheduled for my son, so a total of at least 4-5 days of no revision factored in (he opted not to do DofE this year) - he’s off to Thorpe park next week.

The point of Ops post is the shocking lack of care for her son.

@GrumpyMiddleAgedCow I’m so sorry you weren’t loved. I hope you’ve since found someone who cares about you. A 16 yo is still a child and it wouldn’t be normal for a parent to not want them checked on on a school trip abroad. When I was ill recently my mum checked in with me daily over the phone and if dh wasn’t with me she’d have driven to my house and I’d do the same for her. When a dc is on a school trip, the teachers have responsibilities beyond ignoring an ill child.

so a 16 year old, not a child, but a young adult old enough to travel to Disney from the UK entirely alone, in a park with staff and first aiders, was supposed to stay with his friends, but didn't, was slightly unwell, contacted his teachers who came, gave him medicine and put him in a cafe where he could doze, and he is better today.

What exactly is there to complain about?

But they didn't leave him to make his way back to the hotel alone and the only people who have suggested that would have been an option are on this thread.

It's really not clear what the sequence of communication was, let alone what was actually said. Or if the two hours was from him first being left by his friends, or from the teacher being asked to find him.

Yes I would want the staff to be proactive and caring and I don't think a 16yr old is an adult....but also there is very little anyone can do for vomiting and we don't have enough information to judge.

I thought his friends went off without him when he was in the loo? That isn't his fault.

I actually missed the part in one of the OP's later posts that she was texting for half an hour with another teacher who was actively looking for her son. They found him and gave him medicine as well. Then he dozed off in a cafe until it was time to go home in the group.

It sounds like a very normal school trip to be honest. Some kid always gets sick and teachers are used to dealing with it. It's also possible they asked him whether he wanted to go back to the hotel or wait and he felt well enough to stay there.

It seems like OP saw pictures on social media and is hellbent on accusing the teachers of having a good time and posing with mascots over looking for son. I doubt all the photos were taken in the exact 2 hours nobody came looking for him. Also, the time frame may or may not be an exaggeration. In situations like these, people always have the tendency to round up (eg my flight was delayed for 3 hours! Instead of 2.5. Or we were stuck in traffic for 2 hours instead of 1.5) 1-1.5 hours is not an unrealistic time period to track down someone in a giant theme park with broken communication in between.

@AnxiousRabbit I was referring to the people on this thread and their responses (I went back to edit to make this clear but it was beyond the time limit).

tbh I read that they got to him two hours later, but it’s still not good enough. It was just a 24 hour bug, but it might not have been and I personally (as a teacher) I would never have taken that risk with a child in my care.

I don’t know why we’re trying to find a way around this with nonsense about time frames etc. a child was poorly, a teacher was told and their response was slow.

OP has every right to feel aggrieved from what I read.

DD (16) was in school with nausea and stomach pains. She went to 3 different members of staff (HoY, office and first aid room) saying she felt unwell/was going to be sick and had stomach ache.
Office sent her to HoY tbf
HoY said I'll call your mum but you need to go back to class until she calls me back (actually called wrong number, left VM on someone elses phone and didn't try dad)
FA said come back when you've been sick.....which she was 2 minutes later in the corridor.

I was quite annoyed about this as DD was calling me in tears in secret saying sge wanted to go home but I couldn't reach the school.

My point is staff do make mistakes and sometimes their judgement is off when it comes to kids saying they feel unwell.....but I bet they see lots of kids who exaggerate and they have a lot of competing needs.

Your son sounds a proper simp. Why's he phoning his mummy to say hes unwell.. why isnt he using the contact number of the teacher in charge (yes he will have had that number)

@Maddy70

What an utterly vile comment.

He wasn't left to go back to the hotel alone though?

He became unwell, his friends left him, he called his mum.

He then called a teacher.

He told his mum the teacher said she wasn't coming because she was "in a queue". That's all he said.

In the meantime mum had sent the teacher his location. Disney village, which, depending on where you are in the park can be a bit of a trek, particularly through school holiday crowds.

OP then later added that the teacher had told her they were trying to call his friends, and they were also going to him - for all we know they may have struggled to find him.

He was located, OP says, two hours later, and taken to sit in a cafe, with a teacher, until the coach came to take them all back to the accommodation.

A teacher DID go to him, and did then stay with him - the issue seems to be how long it took for them to get there.

DLP is large though, and crowded, and he was in the village which is a fair trek from the opposite end. It can also be quite difficult to find someone based on a location sent by a third party - what if he'd nipped into the loo to be ill and wasn't at the spot? They would have gone to look elsewhere.

The OP needs more information about what happened from the teachers before she complains.

FYI I'm a teacher too, with years of experience. It's taught me to get both sides of the story, not just parents/kids OR just staff, before making a judgement. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

I dunno. I've sympathy here for the teacher. Sounds like he is a strapping 16 year old with a tummy bug. Where you expecting a 'check in' to look like. With respect if there is just one big bus. It's probably a case of settle him in near the loos with some sparking water. I'm sure he doesn't want an audience every time he needs to run to loo.
I'm assuming she'll go over to him soon to see how's he's getting on. Fifteen minutes either way won't make kind of a difference especially if she's queued up for a long time and was near the top!

Is he back home yet @G172125?