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?

bonsoir then I suggest you don't understand about child development or have an understanding of how children learn
children can learn an awful lot from trips like this

Bonsoir maybe your school runs poor trips? Ds is only in yr 3 now but has loved all school trips including nature walks and den building in the woods. All things that we also do with him as a family but it is the novelty of doing something with school friends.

Just because you and yours get nothing from it, don't presume that everyone else feels the same.

Perhaps that's where the ops dds bottle went? Swipes by teacher and filled with vodka just to get them through the day?

insancerre Hence me posting my link.

Rabbit but think of the rewards afterwards, getting back to the unanimous gratitude from 90 parents.

How very surprising that, having set her face against this trip from the beginning, OP has found that she didn't have her mind changed when it happened, and amazingly enough all her prejudices were confirmed.

Most of what's in the OP is just silly whingeing, but it's really offensive and stupid, I think, to present a TA helping them find somewhere to do a wee as 'strangers pulling her pants down in a public wood'.

Zero sympathy, soz.

Well I took my Y1s on a trip and they learnt about creatures living in the rockpools around our coast. They learnt about tides and visited a tidal island. They wrote stories and researched shipwrecks and created environmental art.Aa year later they look at the photographs and explain to others about the different types of crabs or fish. So I would say they learnt a great deal.

You see, the thing is, as a parent I will happily take my children out all day and seriously hope they DO drink as little as possible, so that I don't have to worry about them needing the loo... If I had someone else's child with me, I wouldn't dare do that.

It's packed lunch. PACKED! Not pack.

Now carry on being pfb.

This is one of those threads where I find the general MN attitude very belittling of a parent's natural concerns.

Of course the OP is concerned by what she has heard from her daughter. Any parent would be. This is her daughter, she knows her best.

Many children will not be at all happy or comfortable having to go to the toilet outside in the woods. And why should they?

Having had experience of incompetently organised primary school trips I would have no difficulty in believing that there were no facilities. Forgetting to take drinks would just be part and parcel of this.

Many parents will not have the experience of spending a day in the woods so will not necessarily know how to dress their child appropriately. My DCs' primary was in a very deprived area so many children would not have necessarily had access to suitable clothes. There would have been plenty of children in dolly shoes and thin Hello Kitty anoraks.

This again? It it really the mother posting this time or some other relative?

In the county I used to work in, every school did Forest School - so in many schools, every Infant child would spend an afternoon a week out in Forest school [other schools did all the way up to Y6, or did a term for each class, or whatever - it would depend on the number of Forest school trained leaders and helprs as well as on the quality of the Forest resource available to the school]

I've been on such afternoons pretty frequently. The first thing is that the 'able' children in the classroom are not always those who are practically able in Forest school, and that is hugely valuable in terms of self esteem, group bonding, social skills etc.

The children learn a large range of science / DT / Art skills that are not always easy to teach in the classroom - tracking animals, creating keys to identify trees and plants, surveying minibeasts for science, sawing, cutting, joining, shaping different materials [whether wood to make a den or sheeting to make a tent or natural materials to make an instrument], or a whole load of art, collage, photography, sculpture, dye-making, pigment-using etc with natural materials.

In terms of PE, fitness, enjoying the open air, developing respect for nature and 'green' issues, knowing about correct clothing etc the intangible benefits are also huge. I was genuinely shocked when taking my new 'non Forest schooled' pupils to an outdoor adventure place for a couple of days - it was obvious that very few had been wet, cold, muddy before, and many had wholly inadequate clothing for being outside for more than the dash between car and house: not a good basis for a healthy and active adulthood.

I don't know Soup i thought they were going to ring the child in sick? Unless the other thread isn't connected. In which case apologies.

worrysigh I'm afraid your nickname doesn't inspire confidence.

Good God, it's not rocket science. If you're spending the day in the woods you wear warm clothing and stout footwear.

Can anyone link to the previous thread?

Maybe industrial scale Forest School isn't such a great idea?... If the school could organise regular trips for smaller groups, that would be a wonderful addition to the curriculum. It's a shame that money, staffing and other resources probably don't allow for it.

You would think spaniel

However do kids go anywhere without instructions on suitable clothing? Parents manages just fine for five years yet somehow the kid hits school and we need idiot proof instructions in a letter or we can't figure it out

Maybe also, if this is a new thing for the school, it could have invited parents in to talk to them about it, first?

Obviously the school was lax. They failed to arrange a heated marquee with tables and chairs and jugs of water and didn't have all the porter loos in situation first!

Gileswithachainsaw - not all parents do manage just fine for five years, you know. Schools unfortunately have to cater for that when they send their instructions out.

A lot of children don't have warm coats and stout footwear. Many of the children I work with are still wearing daps and coats a size too small because there isn't the money at home for snowboots and padded jackets.

Here you go, Caroline

I agree rabbitstew I would not take 90 children if it was a Forest School outing if that's what this was.

But then the parents would complain cos it was twice the price to go cos of the extra vehicles needed to transport all the crap lol