Tighter restrictions for school trips due to safety reasons

The Education Ministry will issue a circular which imposes restrictions on annual educational school trips, next week.

Each school will now be required to submit their plan for the trip to the Education Ministry, and a committee will need to study the proposal and approve the trip.

The plan should include: the route, the duration, the age group of the students, relevance to their educational work, the location where the students will stay overnight, the number of students and the number of teachers accompanying them.

They will also have to submit information about any proposed changes of the route. After the Committee submits its approval with necessary amendments the school will be able to go ahead with the arrangements.

There will also be a limit for the number of days taken for a trip.

School children will not be allowed to bathe in public places such as tanks, lakes, waterways, streams and the sea. This is one of the conditions schools will need to follow from now on. They should also not be exposed to vulnerable areas.

The teachers accompanying the students will have to take the responsibility of ensuring safety of the students.

These restrictions follow complaints of many of the trips under taken without following safety measures, which posed a threat to schoolchildren's safety.

There had also been complaints of some organisers of such trips obtained commissions from the buses used for travel, the locations visited and the restaurants the students were taken for meals. These conditions were also imposed because four Gampola school students drowned in the Gomarankadawala area. - DW