Booster class, anyone?education independent.co.uk. Local education authorities are tightening their guidance on school trips following a spate of fatal accidents last summer. One is Buckinghamshire council, which has just published strict new advice for schools after the death of a schoolgirl on an expedition in Vietnam. Other authorities across the country are discouraging schools from signing up for challenging trips, thereby denying their students valuable learning experiences, says Charles Rigby, executive chairman of World Challenge Expeditions.The Government should act, Mr Rigby says, because sixth-formers who want to go on challenging, character-building expeditions should be allowed to do so. Mr Rigby says he has had calls from half a dozen schools concerned that they may have to pull out of trips because of the concerns of their local authority.Amy Ransom, 17, a student at Wycombe High School in Buckinghamshire, fell to her death on a mountain trek in Vietnam last July.

She fell 500ft down a ravine after losing her grip on a tree as she descended backwards down a muddy slope. An inquest in December returned a verdict of accidental death.Her death, which came after several others, including that of Bunmi Shagaya, 11, from south London who drowned during a school trip to France a month earlier, has already prompted the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers to recommend that all its members boycott school visits, especially abroad.Buckinghamshire’s report into the tragedy says that schools should expect private companies running the trips to have “first-hand knowledge” of the destination. “Where expeditions to distant Third World countries are planned, it is reasonable for schools to expect the required first-hand knowledge to be provided by the contractor… This should include prior knowledge of every location, the likely accommodation, and the quality and standard of other services to be used.”If Amy’s group had known the nature of the route in advance, they would never have attempted the mountain trek, it argues. World Challenge disputes this, but its own inquiry into the accident recommended that this particular path should not be used by future school groups.”Amy Ransom’s death was a tragic accident,” Mr Rigby says. “These guidelines will make it impossible for anybody to go on genuinely challenging expeditions. They say that they want people to be challenged, but they want to eliminate all risk.

They want every trail visited beforehand, every meal pre-eaten, every dormitory pre-inspected.”If we’re not careful, we will end up only being able to send students on package holidays not on true expeditions. The guidelines are already shackling, this only makes things worse.”Peter Millar, a retired Air Vice-Marshal who conducted the company’s investigation into Amy Ransom’s trip, warns that overseas expeditions will undoubtedly suffer if rigid rules are applied. It is unreasonable to expect the leader of a trip to have previous first-hand experience of it, he says. “If a school runs a regular ski trip to a particular resort well known to a member of staff, what happens if that teacher leaves? To expect all future trips to be cancelled until another member of staff can be sent to experience it for themselves would be ridiculous.”Buckinghamshire’s report says that its policy on school visits should be strengthened to clarify the responsibilities of schools and the council in planning and approving trips. Clearer contracts between schools and outside organisations are also needed. There should be better guidance on carrying out risk-assessments, and clarification of what constitutes a “visit”, to set out the necessary staffing ratios. Planning and risk-assessment of each trip must be approved by the council and there should be training for headteachers, teachers and governors.However, governing bodies are only encouraged to abide by the Buckinghamshire guidance – they are not obliged to follow it.s.cassidy independent.co.uk.

The drama teacher, a wired bundle of tension, every nerve stretched by two days of preparation and one day spent watching performances with the GCSE examiner, waved an envoy towards the school gates. We had skidded into school just in time at 7pm, having been held up by jams across north London from home to this, our GCSE-candidate daughter’s school.Inside we headed for Drama One, but were sent upstairs to a common room “Parents are waiting there,” a brisk woman teacher told us A handful of other parents was huddled in puzzled groups The minutes ticked by At 7.20pm I wondered downstairs The nervy head of drama was issuing instruction “But I’ve just been,” said the sixth-former “Go again,” said the drama head “Go around all the entrances. Make sure there isn’t anybody waiting around.”At 7.40pm he gave up and began to usher the handful of parents in Settling everybody took another 10 minutes Then the lights went down and the first group came on stage. My daughter is my third child to take drama GCSE and, as ever, I was stunned by the mixture of maturity, excellence and sudden, raw naivety. The children write and direct the plays, starting from scratch in a three-day residential drama workshop.