Has this school trip broke any regulations/laws?

[emma16]

I would appreciate some help here please, my 5 year old daughter went on a trip with 2 other classes from her school on Friday to a wood which I was initially concerned about as we go there ourselves on a Sunday etc for walks & have never seen any facilities there.
I raised my concerns with her teacher the week before they were due to go, to which she hardly knew anything of the trip & when i arrived at home time another teacher i know told me that she'd been there & there were facilities, and 'as if' they'd take 3 classes of kids somewhere where there wasnt!
I wasn't pretty hot about this trip seeing as they've waited until the middle of November to do it, and as any genuinely concerned parent, I was worried about how cold my daughter would be seeing as they were leaving just after 9am & not returning to school until 3.15pm.

Off she went anyway, but when my husband picked her up from the woods car park the first thing she said to him was 'im so thirst daddy & my head really hurts'. He brought her home & we found out that they had not taken their water bottle's with them & she'd had nothing to drink whatsoever all day, despite being active for 5 hours walking & doing activities.
We also found out that there were no toilets provided & her & 3 of her friends were taken by some assistant she doesn't know to wee behind a tree out in a public wood!!!
She also told us, when questioned by us, they never went in any buildings & were outside all day. They'd sat on little stools under a sheet to eat their pack lunchs.

Now some of you on here will think i'm over reacting no doubt & appreciate it if all you want to say is a snide comment about my over bearing parenting, but, in my opinion i feel they have done wrong.
I have made several enquiries with other people & as far as they know, there are no facilities whatsoever up at this wood, which my husband & I are going to visit this morning to find the country ranger & ask him himself.

If there aren't this means that no risk assessment could have been carried out, those teachers lied to my face after voicing my concerns, they let my daughter go without any fluids for over 5 hours despite being active & came home ill & with a headache, they let some stranger to her pull her pants down in a public wood to wee, and they gave them no form of shelter/heating for even a short period of time just to warm them up before going back out again.
Is any of this ok, does anyone with some knowledge actually know? From a parents point of view there's all sorts wrong with it. If there were facilities why did they choose not to use them?

PD - the good news is, it's only a month until the next lot of holidays!! Which would need to be much longer & have the promise of lots of gin & chocolate to get me through until then!! God help us.

Ha! I'm leading Outdoor Learning at school after my return from mat leave. I take children in a wooded area 2 days a week! Approx 180 kids in 2 days!

And, there are no toilets. We are only a 10 min walk to school though.

Well, she can name change as often as she likes.

but I'll hunt her down and batter her with the 'Risk Assessment Guide' if she starts another bloody thread about this

:o

I'd love to be a fly on the wall whilst her dd goes on the year 6 journey! Good grief...5 whole days of risks and hazards to moan about "they had toast every morning and the milk on the cereal was COLD"

and try getting an 11 year old to take a coat

Lol.....haha!!!!

What's the chances of op's offer of help on any future trips being accepted?

They certainly don't get better with age ... I took 50 kids for a week on the Isle of Wight. On the last day I said "make sure you put your cases on the coach" which to be fair they all did, unfortunately one child hadn't put his clothes in the case (because I hadn't told him to.

princess.

sorry.

The no drinks is bad luck (but I don't believe it - they would have had drinks with lunch - in which case that is sufficient for anything short of a marathon).

The rest: I presume you're not enrolling for scouts of Duke of Edinburgh then...?

worrysigh I wasn't expressing surprise at the Woodland ranger's hygiene concerns. My point was that any trip involving such organisations (as this trip would appear to have been) will have had Health and Safety guidelines coming out of its ears, if their issues about clean hands for snacks were anything to go by.

mrz good grief :o

That's brilliant.

Didn't you plan for just that eventuality in your risk assessment though?

The coach broke down in a trip with year 5 once. I was leading the trip...only in my 2nd or 3rd year of teaching. Did a good job of getting all kids and adults up the bank in the side of the road. Phones the school to let them know ROTC etc.

Kept 40 fidgety kids sat down for 40 minutes until another coach came.

On return to school one parent openly bollocked me as I came down the steps of the coach. I was do tired and stressed I think I was probably a bit unprofessional and rude back. Some patents have no clue about what a teacher has to contend with....

Sorry for typos... Blooming phone

fortunately I checked the rooms to make sure nothing was left behind if the OP had been male I would have guessed at identity

Ah, mrz, I bet your failed in your responsibility for doing a risk assessment for 'failed to put clothes in bad'. Tsk, tsp.

You couldn't make it up...

Just and :o

I had a couple of Year 6 turn out for a PGL climbing wall activity in flipflops (mid-October as well).
Mrs clam: Where are your trainers? (they'd been told countless times of the dress-code for climbing)
Dozy kids: Er..... we packed them." (last day of trip)
Mrs clam: Well, go and unpack them. Where are your suitcases?
Dozy kids turn and point to pile of 60 identical-looking un-named suitcases piled under staircase ready for coach.

Surprising how many parents pack their child's case for them, with the result that some kids have no idea what's in there. So we had one child swearing blind they had no waterproofs with them. Eventually we found them stuffed in an outside pocket of the case. "Oh, my mum must have put them there."

9 hours on a ferry and bus later and mum shouted at me as I handed her a bin liner full of his clothes apparently I should have packed

There's just no hope is there :o

There's just no hope is there :o

For every parent like this, there's at least a baker's dozen of us out here just so grateful for all that the schools and teachers do.

Maybe the moral of this thread is that we should remember to thank teachers more - I know I don't always remember. So to all teachers - thank you - you are amazing!

Out of 60 kids on a trip, you're lucky if you get half a dozen who say thank you at the end of it.

Learning to outdoor pee is a life skill. What possible reason can you have for never having had to teach this to your child prior to getting to school?

I had to pee mid walk in the woods today. (TMI) A duck may have seen my 'foo' (?!) what a horror.

I would be overjoyed if my child's school did a trip like this, and my child is just as precious as yours.

OP, YABU.