One perk of being a teacher is taking advantage of the possibilities opened up by school trips. These offer the perfect chance to escape the confines of the classroom, get to know the students in a slightly less formal environment, and, occasionally, have fun.
Which members of staff get to go on these trips opens up peculiar inter-departmental politics. PE departments have the monopoly on ski trips. If you've ever sat with two or more PE teachers in a staff room, you'd understand why they often struggle to fill the student teacher ratio. The Art department go to some of the most exotic locations, as they can justify going to pretty much any destination that has a gallery. There's generally a two-year waiting list for teachers of other subjects to get on these trips. The easiest way to get 'in' on a trip is to plan one your self.
All well and good, until you encounter the mountain of paperwork needed just to take a class to the park over the road. The risk assessment form is a key reason why on most days in a school year you'll find staff and pupils going nowhere.
Trying to 'establish' the risk factor of everything from crossing a road, to entering a building, is daunting to say the least. There are no obvious rules or real logic to the process. Risk assessment is vital to ensure that insurance is valid and covers staff and students whilst away from school premises. However, whilst car or home insurance can be calculated by a simple set of known facts such as value of goods and postcode, there are no such 'simple' equations when filling out risk assessment forms. What is the danger presented by crossing a class of students over a road? How do you establish the exact level of threat posed on a roller coaster during a visit to a theme park? How can you possibly guess how many stairs you might need to descend in an art gallery?
You soon come to realize that the best school trips to go on are, generally, those organised by other members of staff. Yes, you'll have a level of responsibility for the children who go on the trip, but it starts and ends there. With no headache-inducing mountain of paperwork to navigate before hand, you can look forward to a day or more off timetable.
If only it were so simple. Few realize that to leave your classes, even for a day, requires the same level of planning and input as if you were there yourself. If the trip takes place during the holidays, you 'lose' those precious days of switching off and relaxing. This, might, go some way towards explaining why one element of the risk assessment form that rarely gets a look-in is evaluating the potential risk posed by the teachers themselves. If there were a section on the forms for 'risk posed by staff having one drink to unwind' it's highly likely that any trips would ever leave the school gates...
