A simple school trip that didn’t start simply
In early 2019, I was running a small school trip to an educational talk in a nearby city. It was supposed to be one of the easiest trips a teacher could run. It didn’t start that way.
Student safety on school trips is both the ultimate priority and the thing we quietly hope we never have to think about too hard. There was just me and a handful of sixth formers – lovely, perfectly behaved students – and I was ready with my pack of medical forms and a few slips of paper with a contact number, just as teachers have probably done since the 1950s.
As you might expect, the 8:30am meeting time came and went, and one student hadn’t arrived. Any teacher who has been in that situation knows how it feels. You have no way of knowing whether he’s simply running late or whether something more serious has happened.
Some teachers ring home after a while. Some schools collect student phone numbers and quietly delete them after the trip to keep the GDPR lawyers happy. I did what many teachers do – I asked if anyone had his number and could give him a call.
Nobody did. One student thought they might be Facebook friends and could try messaging him that way. I couldn’t help but feel the absurdity of the situation. I was supposed to be this boy’s teacher in loco parentis for the day, but until he turned up and I handed him a slip of paper, we had no way to contact each other directly in an emergency. And even then, I couldn’t contact him if I thought there was a problem – I could only hope he’d contact me.
In truth, I never really panicked. He was old enough and sensible enough for me not to fear the worst, and he turned up twenty minutes late because his train had been delayed. But for those twenty minutes, my hands were tied. All I could do was decide when to hit the red alert button and call his parents to say I couldn’t find their child.
The problem with emergency contact slips
It was an easy trip after that, and I spent most of the day thinking about what had happened that morning. Even the standard procedure of handing out emergency contact number slips felt wrong. I understand why it was the best option before students had mobile phones, but it seems absurd in 2019 to leave the decision of what constitutes an emergency entirely to the child, while the responsible adult guards a school mobile bought in the 1990s and hopes they can unlock it in time when they see the missed call.
Why TripAid was built
TripAid was created to give teachers the ability to contact students if they are late, go missing mid-trip, or stray from an agreed area. Because ninety-nine percent of the time, the student is just at the sweet shop – but the one percent matters, and you need to be ready for it.
With TripAid, teachers can see where pupils are, check they are staying in their groups, and message them directly if something looks wrong, before a situation escalates. It puts teachers in control, whether students are exploring a museum, a theme park or a city centre.
It took almost two years of development to get here, and we are proud to say TripAid is now in the best shape it has ever been, ready to improve the safety and quality of school trips for students, teachers and EVCs across the UK.
Tim Lister
Teacher and Founder, TripAid
