Pupils’ bus ride across town hit by row over red tape

PARENTS of 200 pupils at a Yorkshire secondary school had to fill in a risk assessment before their children were allowed to go on a nine-minute bus ride across town.

The teenagers boarded the coaches in the school car park and safely got off on a local university campus 3.7 miles away.

After spending the day mixing with students, the pupils, aged 14 to 15, from Scalby School, Scarborough, got back on board for the nine-minute return journey.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But before last Friday’s “excursion”, parents had to provide a medical history of their children, as well as their NHS numbers, and list emergency contacts and family doctors.

For ailments not covered by the boxes, families were asked to provide a covering letter from their GPs. Consent was also required for any emergency treatment needed during the journey and details of any contagious diseases youngsters were suffering.

Parents were also warned to alert trip organisers if their child developed a health problem after filling in the form.

One mother said: “Soon we will have to fill out a form if we want the kids to be allowed to sharpen their own pencils. The trees in the rainforest must be screaming in terror.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Teaching unions have previously called on members to boycott school trips because of fears teachers could be sued by over-litigious parents if anything went wrong. But more recent guidance by the Health and Safety Executive has made clear that low-risk trips should not be treated in the same bureaucratic way as high-risk ones.

MPs said the case showed the Government’s message that risk and adventure were back on the agenda was not getting through to schools and education authorities.

Chairman of the Education Select Committee and MP for Beverley and Holderness, Graham Stuart, who led a long campaign in Westminster to stop health and safety killing-off school trips, said: “What are they playing at? This shows just how damaging and frustrating bureaucratic interventions can be.

“The Government has acted. It has slashed requirements and demanded a more common sense approach to health and safety. Guidance has shrunk from 150 pages to eight, but that doesn’t do any good unless we can get schools and local authorities to wake up and stop hiding behind health and safety myths.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Scarborough’s MP Robert Goodwill called for a common sense approach.

“It’s not as if they are going skiing to Austria or on a kayaking expedition. It is a culture we have become sadly all too used to but the Government is reducing health and safety on school trips and it is now a time for common sense not more box ticking.

“No doubt the school is frightened to death about breaking the rules and trying to cover its back in case Ofsted pounces. But I hope North Yorkshire will make it clear this type of trip should not facilitate this sort of form filling.”

Scalby Head David Read denied the process was bureaucratic.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“It is a standard form. We just make sure we have parental permission and we know if the children have any problems,” he said. “Yes, it’s a low risk trip and we know that. But any trip which goes out of school – because we have the safety of youngsters in mind – will have a risk assessment done of any journey.”

He added that people who complained about having to fill in the form “would be the same ones who hang me out to dry if a child got run over”.

Four buses had been used to transport the children to the Scarborough Campus of Hull University, on Filey Road, on the other side of town.

“The journey was routine, run of the mill. They got off on campus,” said Mr Read. “But there would be other trips where large number of pupils needed to disembark on pavements next to busy roads. So if we do not do something like this we are leaving it open to fate. But in this case, everything had gone smoothly and there had been no problems.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

North Yorkshire County Council said the school was just following national guidelines for any school trip, adding: “You could have a child who has an asthma attack. When children are travelling to school it’s different – then it’s the parents’ responsibility.”