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?

clam - many posters (some who I believe are teachers) think that the OP should have known automatically, so I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't stated it in a letter.

The parent sent a drink into school with her child. It is NOT the parent's fault the drink did not go with the child on the school trip.

Apart from that little detail, the fact the school managed to produce stools and a plastic sheet for the children to shelter under indicates to me that there was a lot of thought put into this trip. If one child didn't drink all day and chose to tell her parents this but not alert the teachers prior to the end of the day, I do have sympathy with the teachers on that - as mrz has pointed out, they are not mind readers. At the age of 5, the only way I could have ensured my child drank something during the day was if someone hovered over them watching them drink it, and it isn't really reasonable to expect teachers to do that.

Our letters usually say to just provide a disposable lunch.

Ie, a carrier bag and things wrapped in foil or freezer bags and a bottle of water. I use an old drinks bottle that I keep and re fill.

No one has starved or gone without a drink despite not having everything spelt out. We so a strange thing too sometimes and ask the teachers if we are unsure about something.

Unless the child has a medical problem?

Perhaps if the OP had put the drink in the packed lunch it might have been taken with the child

I'm afraid, rabbitstew that there are indeed some parents who expect exactly that from their child's teachers. There was a thread on here quite recently about it (along the lines of why hasn't my child's teacher noticed that she's only drunk a little bit from her water bottle today).

Obviously it wasn't clear to the OP that the drink had to be inside the packed lunch. Not sure why it is such an issue for teachers to explain things clearly

If it's a child's first school trip, and the school's requirements for the food and drink parents' provide is different to a normal day, then it is not obvious to all parents what they want.

This is not about availability of a drink (nobody has every died of thirst because they had no access to water for 6 hours btw, but that's by the by). Or toilets for that matter.
Those factual questions could be cleared up quite easily. Of course none of us know what was and wasn't said in any letter to the parents.

The OP is unhappy with her DDs school.
They won't be able to do right for doing wrong.

I am quite sure that the school will be happy to facilitate a smooth transition to another school as somebody upthread said so diplomatically.

If the OP had put the drink in the packed lunch, then the OP would probably have been assuming that the only drink opportunity for their child that day would be at lunchtime, otherwise the drink being in the same container as the lunch would not be helpful. This was not the OP's assumption.

But she'd hardly need it separate for the class room would she

On the plus side she's less likely to have needed a wee if she wasn't drinking

hettienne if you were packing a picnic would you include drinks?

If I was packing a picnic I would probably take DS's water bottle for him.

I probably wouldn't put it in the same bag as the food either, I'd have it separate so it was easily accessible.

But then you wouldn't have 90 kids bottles to carry so it wouldn't matter.

Teachers, next time get a horse to follow you packed up with the bottles just in case the kids can't wait til designated intervals

I never put my children's drinks in with their food when I go on a picnic, I keep them separately so that they don't leak on the food.

And if he was going on a school trip I'd send him in with his lunch bag and his water bottle, as usual, unless requested by the school to do something different.

Gileswithachainsaw - how do you think they got all those stools into the wood?

I hope they packed the horse a drink :o

Giles - I have no idea what teachers do on a school trip, as I'm not a teacher. Why would I?

And in this case, talking about stools is doubly appropriate, given the seating and toileting issues.

lisad - not necessarily true it's a TA who is CRB checked (or whatever they now call it) who is pulling your child's pants down on a school trip.

No school child needs help pulling their effing pants down!! The child will not have had an audience as she peed behind a bush.