Supervision of children outside the school - numbers requirement?

AhInFairness

Hopefully someone here can answer this question for me.

Today I saw a large group of scool children, probably around 7 or 8 years of age, walking back towards their school through a housing estate and across a large park. There were approximately 50 students. They appeared to be broken into two, roughly even, groups. The first group had a teacher/supervisor and the front of the line of children and one at the back. The second group had only one teacher/supervisor at the front. There was a substanital gap between both groups.

I was walking along with this second group and the teacher was walking very quickly ahead and only once in the 6 or 7 minutes that I was walking along side them did she look back to check the line of children. There were kids that she could not see bringing up the rear around a corner. At no point did she stop to do a head count. She gave one cursory glance and kept walking very quickly.

Are there requirements for the number of supervisors per number of children on outings like this? It seems crazy to have one teacher with approximately 25 children following behind her!

byhookorbycrook

The short answer is no, if the DES sees fit to have one teacher to 30 kids, there are no extra bodies to walk with classes.If there is an SNA assigned to a class, they would be with the group, but that's it.

ShamoBuc

The group was about 50 children with 3 supervising. The first group should really have slowed down and not let such a gap appear, but it does happen when you have 50 8yr olds. In an ideal world you would have 4 or 5 supervising - but then again, the ratios in schools are far from ideal and teachers cannot be manufactured from thin air for such walking activities.
Also there may have been a teacher at the back of the 2nd group but they might have had to stop for a particular reason.
With regard to doing a head count, you would normally do that before you set out and when you get back - not half way through. But it depends on how long a walk it was - it might only have been a 10 min walk.

AhInFairness

ShamoBuc wrote: »

Also there may have been a teacher at the back of the 2nd group but they might have had to stop for a particular reason.

There wasn't, I can assure you.

ShamoBuc wrote: »

With regard to doing a head count, you would normally do that before you set out and when you get back - not half way through. But it depends on how long a walk it was - it might only have been a 10 min walk.

I'm more concerned with the fact that she only threw her eye back once and didn't bother to stop even though she couldn't see a substantial number who were still around the corner.

But, if there are no required numbers of supervisors then there are no required numbers. Seems mental to me, but there you go.

ShamoBuc

AhInFairness wrote: »

But, if there are no required numbers of supervisors then there are no required numbers. Seems mental to me, but there you go.

A teacher would normally not leave the school for a walk on their own, normally they would bring one teacher along with them - but they don't have to, it's just good practice. Depending on the class, a teacher might need 2 or 3 teachers/sna's with them.
Should their be a rule, or a minimum? Maybe...but there isn't at the moment.

byhookorbycrook

But where do they get the "spares" Shambo?

ShamoBuc

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

But where do they get the "spares" Shambo?

They are in the staffroom drinking coffeee of course:pac:


Normally we try to get the Language/LS/Resource teacher that deals with the students of the class to use their allocated time with the child/children from the class for the walk/excursion. I'd say that's fairly typical.
Wouldn't it be great to have a few 'floating' teachers though:D