Safety During the Activity / Trip

The group leader must have read and understood the DfES A handbook for Group Leaders .

The responsibility for the safety of each student must be clearly defined at all times. In larger groups each member of staff or adult helper should be given supervisory responsibility for specific named students. Students should also be clear about which adult is responsible for them. All supervisors should carry a list of all students and adults involved with the visit or activity at all times.

Whatever the nature and location of the visit, regular student head counts should take place, particularly before leaving the venue. Students should not wear name badges, but they should be carrying emergency phone numbers. On longer overseas trips this should be in the form of a laminated credit card with emergency phone numbers both in the country and back in the UK along with phrases in the language of the country to request directions to rendezvous points and, as a last resort, to the nearest police station.

At the beginning of the activity the group leader should establish rendezvous points and tell students what to do if they become separated from the group.

Use of Activity Centres
Allocating responsibility for students is especially important when the responsibility is divided between the school/college and centre during a residential course. Under common law, the teachers accompanying the party on the activity/visit have ultimate responsibility, acting in "loco parentis". However, occasionally a teacher can discharge his/her responsibility by temporarily entrusting the safety of the students undertaking specific activities to a member of the activity centre staff. This may be the case when students participate in potentially hazardous activities controlled by experts at the centre. Throughout the rest of the activity/visit the responsibility will be with the accompanying teachers.

Prior to the start of a course, the party leader should obtain a written statement from the centre management clearly indicating in what circumstances centre staff will expect to be responsible for the safety of the students.

It is essential that at all times each member of the school or centre staff on the trip knows exactly for which students they are responsible and the extent of that responsibility. Each student should also know which member of staff is responsible for them or their group.

At the beginning and end of each session for which activity centre staff are in charge there should be a clear transfer of responsibility and the students should be made aware of this.

Some activity centres provide group tutors or night duty staff. Teachers may not assume that such arrangements release them from responsibility for their students. Party leaders retain responsibility for the safety of students at all times other than in cases where this has been entrusted to a member of the centre's staff in circumstances described above.

Contingency plans should be drawn before each session covering the withdrawal of one or more of the accompanying teachers or centre staff through illness or for other un-foreseeable reasons. Again, readjusted responsibilities should be clear and known to all in the party.

Additionally, at the beginning of each trip or activity students should be made aware of rendezvous procedures should anyone become lost, the system of emergency recall/action and groupings for study and supervisory purposes.

It is recommended that each participant carries some form of personal identification and the activity leaders emergency contact details with them at all times in the event of them getting lost or separated form the rest of their party.

Teachers may take part in controlled activity sessions, alongside students under the instruction of a member of the centre staff. In such circumstances the students should be told that the centre instructor is in charge of the session. The teacher should not normally seek to influence or overrule the instructor in matters relating to the safe conduct of the session.

However, in certain circumstances the teacher, even if not expert in the activity, may become concerned about the safe conduct of the activity and feel compelled to take action on behalf of the students. In such situations, the teacher must withdraw students from the activity at the first appropriate opportunity and inform the instructor of his/her actions. Such incidents must be reported to the party leader, the head teacher and the centre manager.

rca 28/05/08
updated eaw 03/11/10
reveiwed eaw 19/10/11