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?

[hettienne]

mrz - unless otherwise told I would assume the same rules apply to packed lunches for school trips as for packed lunches for staying in school. For DS that means no drink in his packed lunch, but they have a water bottle that goes into school every day.

[QuintessentialShadows]

Did the letter not specifically say to bring lunch and drink in disposable containers/bags as nothing would be taken back to school but disposed of?

I think you need to re read the original letter.

When my dc go on school trips, lunch with drink is taken in plastic bags, so it can all be thrown away.

I dont see anything wrong with the setup you described.

[mrz]

Why would anyone assume that there will be access to jugs of water in a forest even if there are in the school dining hall [stunned]

[rabbitstew]

There's no way of knowing whether or not the parent or school has been unreasonable without access to the school's risk assessment for the trip. I doubt the school has behaved as badly as the OP thinks. However, on the basis of the worst case scenario, I do agree that 60 children peeing and pooing behind trees is not quite the same thing as one child getting caught short on a family walk! Dog poo on walks is bad enough, but I take huge exception to stepping in human excrement and discarded toilet paper while out on a walk... so you would want to know this trip had been meticulously planned!!!

However, I know as a fact that some schools appear to think it OK for non-CRB checked people not well known to the school to help on school trips and be responsible for toilet visits. My father was once asked to help on a school trip when he'd just turned up to drop his grandson off at the coach. He then spent a fair part of the rest of the day helping take the small boys (aged 6) to the toilet and helping wipe small bottoms when requested, because he was the only male helper, so happiest to go into the boys' toilets. He was not accompanied by any of the CRB-checked female staff. So much for only highly trained, CRB-checked school staff doing this.

Also, I find it funny that considering how to ensure children have enough water to drink during the day does not appear to be part of the school's risk assessment. A school dotting every i and crossing every t, and therefore taking human nature into account, will have had the common sense to specify how it wanted parents to send their children's drinks into school on the school trip day, if sending a beaker of water in as usual was not going to be the convenient way of doing it. Why SHOULD a parent automatically presume that the school will be incapable of transporting their child's drinks bottle to the venue unless it is inside the child's lunchbox?

[insancerre]

people are assuming that the water bottle that is in the classroom is then taken into the lunch hall for the children to drink from at lunchtime
no the water bottle stays in the classroom and the children have access to jugs of water ( and milk in our school)and cups in the lunch hall

[hettienne]

mrz - I'd assume they take their water bottles OR they would make clear that additional drinks need to be provided for school trips.

[mrz]

Perhaps the teacher assumed they would take their water bottles too

[hettienne]

If the teacher assumed they would take their water bottles and then forgot to, then I think that's a legitimate issue for the OP to raise with the school.

[mrz]

rabbitstew the OP hasn't answered my question about whether her child told the teacher mummy hadn't sent a drink ... in which case I'm sure staff would have seen she got one even if it meant giving her their own drink.
I'm afraid I simply don't believe that all 90 children went without a drink

[mrz]

It's why we don't assume hettienne and why my post wasn't serious

[clam]

I am not a betting woman, but I would lay money that the need for a lunchtime drink in lunchboxes was spelt out in the letter home.

[hettienne]

There does seem to be a bit of a problem with some schools assuming parents will automatically know how everything works. If this is the first school trip these 5 year olds have been on, then clear information about what is expected is the way to go.

[mrz]

[mrz]

I'm so pleased that we don't ask children to take packed lunch to the woods nettles soup and worms with rice are so much easier to handle

[LIZS]

Sorry but think you are being ott, especially about the supervised weeing . The vast majority of adults , CRB checked or not , would not go out of their way to see a child's bits ! You could have asked to see the Risk Assessment before agreeing to the trip (although perhaps you weren't aware). Clearly they did have an improvised shelter and seating at lunchtime, although it may not have met your dd's expectations of shelter, which suggests to me that your dd may not be the most reliable source of information on the other details.

[Gileswithachainsaw]

Can see it now. Next letter : can all parents please make sure they feed and water their children. Children will also need clothes.

[hettienne]

Next letter just has to say "please include a drink inside the packed lunch box/bag as children will not have access to their water bottles on the trip".

[LIZS]

Maybe they offered them a hot drink and op's dd declined ?

[Floggingmolly]

The packed lunch should have included a drink. Who doesn't understand that when you pack a lunch for a child's school trip, you must provide liquid? Let alone when they're going to the middle of a bleeding forest.
Check with the other mums, op, and see if you were the only loon innocent who thought there'd be a tap in the middle of the forest; or if all the other kids came back as desiccated husks also.

[clam]

Hettienne How did you know the last letter didn't say this already?

Honestly, do you all think teachers are stupid?

[Gileswithachainsaw]

A drink is part of lunch whether the school provide jugs of water or it's in the packed lunch already. Ergo it's surely not a huge leap to realise that as they are taking their lunch with them as obviously jugs of water will be unavailable in the woods (where it was clear they were going) and putting a drink in a lunch box is obvious to anyone with a brain cell surely

[mrz]

we are back to common sense Gileswithachainsaw

[hettienne]

The OP sent a water bottle in with her DD. I would think a water bottle was fine for the provision of liquid in a forest Floggingmolly, unless the school said they specifically wanted a small drink packed in the lunch box.

[hettienne]

Honestly, I wouldn't know that a drink bottle outside the lunch box was unmanageable for a school and that they needed a carton of something inside the lunch box, especially if the rule is usually no cartons in the lunch box Giles.

[mrz]

or lack of it