Year 4 residential school trip security issues

[iSarah]

My dd (just turned 9) is due to go on a 3 day school trip next month but I am concerned about the security issues. The site is easy to walk into from the road, with a single arm lift up wooden barrier at the gate, and hip height fencing around the perimeter.

I've been told the children will be sleeping in tents and the teachers in cabins nearby. Sceptical: The school say nothing bad has happened before and they feel this is safe, but I'm not so sure? Our information meeting is tonight. Does anyone have any questions/suggestions for me? I am becoming increasingly worried.

For instance, if the children want to go to the toilet at night they are expected to wake up a friend and then leave their tents and go to the teacher's cabins, apparently.

Am I being paranoid about this whole thing?

Yup, you are being paranoid :-)

So you think it's fine for 8 and 9 year olds to be sleeping in tents outside on their own?

Yes. Absolutely. I used to do it all the time in the back garden. And they won't be on their own in the tent. And you can every noise from every tent in a campsite.

Oh, and I'm almost certain they won't sleep :)

Schools have to risk assess everything. If you have concerns maybe your first port of call should be to ask to see the risk assessment/s. It would probably answer a lot of your questions /concerns.

I'm a cub leader and regularly take groups of 8 - 10 yos on camping trips to scout sites mostly that are often near to residential areas and are pretty accessible. The kids sleep several to a tent & leaders can't sleep in with children for obvious reasons. We supervise lights out before turning in ourselves and usually nominate one of the older children as 'tent sixer', responsible for alerting leaders to problems or accompanying midnight loo visits. The biggest problems we ever get are one or two being homesick the first night or someone smuggling in too many sweets for midnight feasts.

Yes, you are being paranoid. 8 and 9 year olds are cubs/brownies, and most will have camped before. Genuine question - what do you think might happen?

Why do they go to the teachers' cabins for the toilet? Because the toilets are in the cabins or because they need to be taken?

If you are in the UK, as Cog says, all this will have been risk-assessed and CRBd to within a millimetre of its life.

The scout camp I'm most familiar with Herts is very popular with school groups. It's divided into sections and each group gets a section to itself. Some are quite hard-core camping and are just a field with a stand-pipe/tap and shower/loo block. The groups have to bring everything in, set it up and take it away at the end.

Other sections for less experienced campers and younger children have permanent cabins that contain kitchen, showers, toilets and some indoor sleeping accommodation next door to a field where tents can go. The latter are better for schools that don't have masses of camping equipment.

I would be asking

• What time is lights out and will the teachers be checking the children at any point during the night?
• If a child is upset or whatever, what is the procedure (phone calls etc)?
• What instructions will children be given about leaving the allocated area? (We set up a tape perimeter and children are not allowed to go past it without permission as most campsites have some kind of lake or pond)

Is the campsite close enough that you could take a visit? Do they have a website where you can see pictures?

Read this

Sounds fine to me.

Your hypothesis is that a potential random child-abductor could steal one of the kids without the others noticing?

Just about possible I suppose, but not very likely.

If the adults were sleeping in the tents with the children, that would be a big worry. They should absolutely not be doing that; so it's a good thing they aren't! If that's what you want them to do then maybe you should think it through a bit more...

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Bucharest - they have to wake the teachers cos it's pitch black and the teachers will take them to the toilet which is nearby. The risk assessment hasn't been done yet by the school (?). They said they will be doing it 2 weeks before the trip.

Yanbu. I wouldn't be happy about this either.

Sorry, just realised you didn't post this in aibu!

But, no, I don't think you are being paranoid, I think you have legitimate concerns which I would share.

Ask them for the risk assessment they did last time then :) Are the kids not allowed torches?

They probably haven't done the risk assessment yet because the trip is something they do every year and so the formal risk assessment is just a bit of paperwork that needs completing. All sounds perfectly fine to me. The children will love it. There will, of course, be peedos lurking behind every bush, but nothing's ever perfect!!

My 8 year old has been on a cub camp recently, the set up was pretty much as you describe except the leaders were in tents too.

They did not wake up the leaders for night time loo trips though. They had a torch and went on their own.

so, your kid needs to take a torch on this camping trip.
Ok, make sure they take a torch.

They won't get much sleep on night one any way, to excited about being in a tent.

I often take large groups of children camping,

I would never go and sleep in a cabin away from the children that I am responsible for, it's amazing how often something occurs in the night.

Even a basic risk assessment would show you that this is inviting trouble.

I would suggest that the adults take it in turns to sleep in a tent nearby.

The teacher cabin is very near the children's tents and the cabin is more like a small shed.

My other concern is that my child occasionally sleep walks. I'm still not getting a good feeling about this trip.

I wouldn't worry about the sleep-walking as I doubt a child could leave a tent without others waking. You could suggest he/she sleeps away from the door which would guarantee others waking as they are climbed over.

I wouldn't like the adults to be in cabins. Tents have no sound-proofing qualities and that helps the adults to be aware of what is going on around them. You can't possibly be so in touch if you were in a cabin. Why are the teachers not in tents like the children?

I would prefer the adults to be in tents amongst the children's tents to enable them supervise adequately.