Postcript to failed trips and tragic excursions
What happened to the fourteen high school students and one bus driver who died in that tragic accident in Tanay, Rizal, last week is another wakeup call for school authorities, parents and the students themselves. The CHED and the DepEd forthwith issued orders that suspended indefinitely all curricular and extra-curricular activities outside the campus. Well, our government is always like that, always reactive, always tentative, always incoherent and lacking in a long-range, definite and holistic approach at such things like these. The orders are always knee-jerk reactions, then we forget everything, until the next tragedy.
A year ago, some students coming from a Bulacan state university, based in Malolos City, went mountain climbing somewhere in the peripheries of the Cordilleras. A number of them drowned when they crossed a river. The university president was removed, the dean was relieved and cases for multi-million damages were filed by the aggrieved parents. Then, nothing is heard of them again. There was a Catholic school in Quezon City whose high school students had night swimming. The teacher assigned had to leave for a few minutes to look for two girls who slipped out. When she came back, one pupil drowned and died. The teacher was dismissed. And the parents sued the exclusive private school for millions in damages.
There is a need for the government to come up with clear, consistent and permanent rules (not an interim or tentative one). Schools must be prohibited from requiring students or pressuring them to join trips and excursions, much less threatening students of failing or incomplete grades. The schools should stop requiring the signing by the parents of waivers and quitclaims that are useless anyway. The schools and their officials should learn the legal dimensions of school administration. Those who are in-charge of student affairs, the prefect for discipline, and other school authorities should study the law on torts and damages, and must master the Manual of Regulations for Private schools.
As a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Paul University, and as a consultant to many educational institutions, I always conduct seminars for school administrators, that include university presidents, vice presidents for administration, the deans and coordinators and managers of the various schools. The tragedy in Tanay involving Best Link College could have been avoided had there been one responsible official who focused on all the preventive and proactive interventions. Apparently, there was none. We can't blame if they raise hell against the school and the transport companies. They should have exercised extraordinary diligence. The lives of the students are what matter most.