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Should School Teachers Be Allowed To Take Children Out Of The Country?
When I was aged 12, my school class in southern England went on a school trip to France, in which me and my friend got lost in a foreign nation.
There was only a few teachers to supervise all the children. We were given print-out maps by our teachers of the area, along with sheets of paper with questions to ask random strangers and to write the replies down as a way of practicing speaking and listening in French.
After a while, the few teachers on the trip wanted to do their own thing and go shopping, and all the kids wandered off by ourselves in our own small groups, and we were told this was fine by our teachers and to meet-up later at a certain point marked on the maps they'd given to us.
A group of boys on the trip bought some bangers in a shop and started throwing them in the street which was anti-social behaviour and it scared me and another girl, so we ran away from them and ended up lost.
We spoke and understood little French, and the little money our parents gave us for the trip was already spent on snacks and refreshment drinks.
I remember wandering around the streets with my school friend feeling thirsty and tired and wondering how we would get home again and we didn't know the dialling-code to phone home, and we were lost.
Two young French men found us and took us to a cafe. They looked bewildered as we spoke little French and couldn't understand their questions. They kindly bought us some fruit juice and gave us some sandwiches to eat. We showed them the map and they kindly showed us the area where we were supposed to meet our teachers to go home.
When the rest of the school kids finally turned up at the meeting point, we later boarded the ferry to go home, and I remember kids were running around on the slippery ferry deck late at night, whilst the teachers slept. The kids went wild on the sense of freedom in being allowed to wear our own clothes and not our school uniforms. It was lucky that none of the kids slipped over the side of the ferry and into the dark sea late at night with the way they were running around.
On another school trip with my primary school, aged 5, I remember there being few teachers to supervise all the pupils, and some of us got lost on a trip to a local castle.
Children go to school to receive an education, and families can take their children abroad with them on holidays, but should teachers be allowed to take children out of the country? Can we trust teachers to look after children on trips?
Caroline Dickinson was from Cornwall and she went on a cultural learning trip with her school class to Brittany. A convicted and imprisoned Spanish man (who'd also harmed other girls in Europe and also in the US too) broke into her hostel late at night where her school class were sleeping in their rooms, and he raped and murdered her whilst she slept.
Some children from England also died once on a school skiing trip after being taken out of the country with inadequate supervision.
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