Who Is Responsible For Accidents On Trips With The School?

Both staff and training center owners have a great responsibility to do everything they can to prevent accidents on trips with the school and to do everything they can to prevent the children from being harmed. In this article, we will discuss activities during school hours, leisure activities and all kinds of excursions and school trips.

As soon as parents drop off their children at school, the school is from that moment responsible for taking care of them  while the children are on their territory or during activities organized by the institution.

Accidents on the school grounds are quite frequent due to the nature of activities and due to children’s sometimes unpredictable behavior. Supervision of educators is crucial in these situations.

Unfortunately  , there are cases where these accidents happen due to lack of care on the part of the teachers. It can be in school, in high school or university. In these cases, the institution has to account for its negligence, whether the accidents are minor or very serious.

We will take a closer look at this matter below to gain a better understanding of who is responsible in the event of an accident on trips with the school.

Risk of accidents on trips with the school

When an educational institution organizes an excursion or a trip with the school, the  risk of accidents is far greater than during the normal activities that take place in their area. 

In the case of school excursions, as they take place outside the school grounds, it is not always possible to control all the factors that may arise. These can occur during the journey and also during the activities themselves that take place during the day.

Liability in case of accidents on trips with the school

The risk of injury or destruction is much greater when there are a large number of students  and not many teachers to keep an eye on them and supervise them. In the case of students with some form of disability, supervision needs to be far greater.

What can parents do in the event of an accident during a school trip?

In the event of an accident on a school trip, parents have different ways of reporting damage available. They can use normal civil procedures to claim compensation. However, they also have the opportunity to do so through the court. It is valid in case of a patrimonial liability claim against a public school.

Bringing a civil liability case

Parents can file a case for misconduct of civil liability both against the school staff and its management. The teachers, authorities and staff of the educational institution will have to prove that they made use of all the appropriate and necessary reservations to avoid the accident.

Two known cases of parents reporting accidents during trips with the school

The mother of a 16-year-old teenage girl with a mental disability filed a claim for compensation for an accident that occurred on a school trip to a nature center.

During a walk, the girl fell into a river. As a result, she suffered a severe brain injury and a fracture of the cervical vertebra. The consequences of these injuries were tetraplegia and very serious, visible injuries. 

The court acquitted the two teachers responsible for the group of students that day. In fact, it was the Nature Center that was prosecuted in this case. That was because, it turned out, she was going on the trip without the center having informed the teachers.

In this case, the fault lay with the owners of the center. The compensation they had to pay was close to $1 million. 

A visit to the zoo

The second case is one that occurred during a group of children’s visits to a zoo. On this occasion, a lion attacked a four-year-old boy. The court ruled that the educational institution was responsible this time.

It turned out that the  cause of the accident at the zoo was a lack of attention, care and vigilance on the part of the school staff  who were in charge of the group of children during the trip.

This does not mean that the management of the zoo has been absolved of responsibility. In order to prescribe the judgment, the court took into account that the child was only four years old. Due to the presence of animals, more caution and preventive measures should be taken.