Unauthorised school trip

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Name changed for this as may be very outing. Penis beaker, Scottish mummy, Korean granny etc

Bit long, sorry.

14yo brought letter home and was really enthusiastic for a school trip to a theme park.so I booked and paid, bit expensive but I don't want them to miss out.

3 days before they started saying they didn't want to go, basically because they wanted to see a special showing of musical the other end of the country and tickets had come up on twickets. I said no to their new plan, it would have cost a fortune anyway for hotel and travel.

14yo still complaining 2 days before trip. Night before trip they came home from school and proper kicked off about how they hated theme parks, weren't going, had nothing to wear (humourless lol at that) and had said all along they didn't want to go (double humourless lol), why was I so stupid to pay for it and so on.

It was turned 4pm and the reception staff had finished so sent a panicked email to the organiser to say 14yo had refused to go slightly glossing reason, not knowing if it was too late and teachers would be wondering where they were at silly o'clock the next morning. Luckily the organiser picked it up.

9-10pm ish, it must have sunk in that expensive theatre trip wasn't happening and rude, spoilt 14yo had another kick off demanding to go. Too late, nothing I could do, you can't mess people around like that anyway. 14yo threatened to just turn up but I explained the teachers couldn't take them because they were no longer on the list which didn't go.down well but tough.

Next morning I got them up and out to school for the normal day despite strenuous attempts at refusal. 14yo has to learn that choices have consequences, this would be a very mild consequence. The theme park trip had long gone by this point.

So - expected 14yo to be safe in school all day.

14yo got home from school and it turned out they'd been offered a place on an alternative extra-curricular, not linked to schoolwork, smaller off-site trip and they said yes... I knew nothing about it, hadn't paid and obviously wouldn't have authorised it anyway.

This really is long!

Massive safeguarding issue, if anything had happened 14yo wouldn't have been covered by insurance. Contacted school immediately. Teacher had felt sorry for the little so-and-so left behind and asked them. I am not happy in the slightest and made that clear. Also had to pay for this bloody trip after wasting theme park money, that's by-the-by because it should have been used but I didn't want a further bill.

I get the impression the school wants to sweep the safeguarding aspect under the carpet as all communication from them has very carefully skirted around this issue. WIBU to follow this up in no uncertain terms after the holidays? I get that the teacher felt like they were being kind and don't necessarily want them punished for being nice but I'm really not happy. Anything could have happened but luckily didn't and they should have at least asked for permission before taking 14yo off site for an extra-curricular.

That’s hardly a safeguarding issue, though?
The school knew where he was and told her, he wasn’t unaccounted for at any point.

Is the actual issue they were a brat and still got rewarded? I don't see how a school trip is such a safeguarding issue. Even if you are right about the insurance thing, surely that would be the schools problem not yours?

It's good practice to inform parents, but schools don't actually need permission for 'routine' trips within school hours.

The OP hasn't said what the trip was, but if it didn't require a higher level of risk assessment and wasn't outside schools hours then they were fine to take the child.

That might be annoying or even upsetting for the parent, but there's no risk to the child - it's not a safeguarding issue.
Safeguarding is about protecting children from harm.

Stop overreacting

I agree and know as long as a parent has signed a permission form at the beginning of term they can be taken on local trips and visits. What they can’t do is take them then afterwards ask the parents for money

Parents don't need to have signed a permission form even.

I would ask them directly why they thought they could take a child without permission payment and insurance and what measures they are going to put into place to prevent these types of mistakes happening again.

That I have never heard of. I’ve always signed a form when joining a school to agree to local trips and children being taken out along with all the other permissions such as social media use

Yes, as I said - that is good practice.
But it's not a requirement for schools.

There were no mistakes here, just op not liking it,

Why do you think she wouldn't be covered by insurance? I'm sure she would. Often you've signed a blanket authority for local trips at the start of the year.

Regardless, you have much bigger things to worry about out than what the school did or didn't do.

I mean this is a non-event surely. Nothing happened. Your child was safe. I would focus on the real problem, which is you have brought up a selfish spoilt teenager.

That’s because if a trip is to take place during school hours parental permission isn’t required but the OEAP say the school should notify parents of the visit.

Report to governors and Ofsted plus local council, if relevant. Seen 'SLT' on power trips authorising stuff they can't legally authorise. They need to be stopped.

I have never worked in a school where we didn't need a signed permission slip from parents for trips. How does the school know there isn't something going on that would make this dangerous? E.g. ex partner threatening to kidnap, medical issues etc.

This isn't my area of expertise, school trips, but it would be surprising if they could do it. They definitely can't make OP pay for it when she never agreed to it!

I would get a very big paper bag and practice breathing into it, big deep breaths, it is all ok

It's also about parents knowing where their children are. It's a serious issue to even move a class to another room and not notify anyone where you are. So taking your child out of school to a new location without asking or informing? And no reason to assume blanket permission given at start of year, I would never agree to that so maybe OP didn't either.

Also, why override the parenting choices? So bizarre to take someone's child somewhere without informing or asking the parent anyway.

Choose your battles! This is minor in the scheme of things. Hardly worth mentioning never mind going in all barrels. Sure you're annoyed but let it go.

No, none of that is an issue, serious or otherwise.
Are you seriously suggesting parents must be informed if their child moves to a different classroom??

Is that what I wrote? No, you have to update the system with your location or leave a note on the door at least.

It's not an issue to ignore parents' wishes or take unnecessary risks with someone else's child when you might not have all the info. Okay.

You don’t need permission for a non adventurous trip during school hours.

Schools don’t need your permission to take your child on a local trip. They ask as a courtesy.

This pattern of parents framing everything they don’t agree with as ‘safeguarding’ to get attention is both annoying and dangerous. It reduces capacity for the safeguarding staff to deal with actual safeguarding concerns.

Such a pointless, unhelpful and patronising comment. Op dealt with the kid. The consequence was he didn’t get to go on the original trip as he’d messed about so much. The school overrode that and took him somewhere else.

Stop trying to act clever with the whole ‘sort your kid out’ rhetoric when that’s exactly what she tried to do and the school took him off site anyway.

OK, so the school were technically in the wrong for taking your child on this trip without your permission. They should have phoned you to ask for verbal consent at this point. And in your position there is no way I would be paying for this trip.

However, I would ask you to consider the fact that, if you kick off and make a really big deal about it, the teacher who was organising the trip will get it in the neck (how badly will depend on the headteacher I guess, plus the specifics of exactly how this happened, whether they asked a member of SLT for permission to take your DD, etc).

Trips are usually organised and led by teachers who volunteer to do this, on top of their existing duties. Some staff members may have organising trips as part of their job description, but many of us don't - we do it because we are committed to giving the students as many opportunities as possible.

The more parents complain about trips, the more that good will is extinguished. I organise a lot of after hours theatre trips, relying entirely on the good will of my colleagues to staff and support this (nobody has it in their job description) and it's increasingly hard to find staff willing to do this....

In short, you would technically speaking be entitled to kick off. But the compassionate thing would be to leave it. I am sure the teacher acted out of kindness, as you say - what other possible motivation could they have had?

Leading trips is fun but really stressful, and the departure time is the worst - waiting for the coach, waiting for late comers, working out who is and isn't there, are the others on their way. Has everyone who needs one got their epi-pen, have you picked up the free school meals. Etc etc etc.

Someone should have phoned you so yes, they fucked up. You can make them suffer for that if you want to.

But do you really want to?

(But please, don't even think about paying - that would be bonkers).