Each year, thousands of children and youth from around southern Africa participate in trips organised by their schools, community centres, and religious, cultural and sports organisations. These trips can take many forms such as a visit to a local museum for purposes of syllabus support, a sports match at a neighbouring school, a leadership programme at a residential venue, or an adventurous hike in the Drakensberg mountains. This range of cultural and environmental education processes, sports development activities, religious excursions, adventure-based and experiential learning, can be broadly described as “Learning Outside the Classroom” (LOtC).
When planned and carried out properly, these trips offer significant opportunities for young people in personal and group growth, development, fun, and learning. They enrich the lives of our youth and complement the processes of the formal education sector. In addition, the LOtC sector creates thousands of jobs – often in economically marginalized areas – and contributes millions of rands to the economy.
Every school and youth trip carries an element of risk. The specific risk profile of a particular trip depends on the distance of the venue from the school or other origin of the trip, the complexity of the required arrangements, and the adventurous nature of planned activities. Thus, the risk profile of a trip to a nearby museum is different to that of a trekking trip to Nepal.
Regardless of the relative risk profile of a trip; the organisers, the leadership team, any third-party providers, and any activity leaders, all carry a duty of care to all participants; with particular attention to safeguarding and the implications of assuming responsibility for minors. This duty of care is both a legal and moral obligation and is written into various Acts and regulations of South African law. Failure to carry out obligations related to duty of care can result in charges of negligence, possibly leading to answering civil or criminal charges in a court of law.
One of the most common responses to the presence of risk, and the threat of liability – especially when dealing with children and youth – is to fall victim to risk aversion. There have been several high-profile tragedies on school trips that have attracted substantial public attention. Educators, school management teams and youth leaders have become fearful of the consequences of a negative incident and are often reluctant to organise or be a part of a trip. Thus, risk aversion has become one of the biggest barriers to getting young people outdoors and results in missed opportunities for them to experience all the positive things mentioned above. Furthermore, risk aversion results in less school and youth trips and this has an impact on the incomes of venue providers and their staff. Thankfully, risk aversion can be mitigated through the implementation of risk management plans and conformity to accepted standards.
Effective risk management for youth and school trips is based on a considered approach to the planning, delivery, and evaluation of all aspects of the excursion. There are currently no coherent guidelines or standards in South Africa to assist trip organisers and leaders in keeping young people safe. However, since 2021, an international technical committee of risk management and learning outside the classroom experts has been writing a standard to provide benchmarks of best practice in leading school trips (ISO 31031 – Managing risk for youth and school trips). This standard is at an advanced level of development, and on publication in September 2024, will become a South African National Standard (SANS), administered by the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS). Initially the standard will be guidance for organisations, but it will become a requirement of conformity within an unknown period. It must be noted that even as a guidance standard, it will be used as a benchmark of minimum good practice in the event of an investigation or inquiry into an incident on a school trip.
SANS/ISO 31031 (FDIS) sets out a clear process for risk management before and during a school trip, with specific roles and responsibilities for people within the school or other organisations. This process has three main objectives:
· To minimize the likelihood of an incident on a trip,
· To enable the trip organiser and leadership team to manage an incident should one occur and,
· To provide a system to collect evidence that all reasonable precautions were taken to prevent and plan for an incident.
In addition to the draft standard for school and youth trips, the SABS administers three existing standards appropriate to adventure activities:
· SANS/ISO 21101: Adventure tourism – requirements for organisations
· SANS/ISO 21102: Adventure tourism – personnel competence (requirements)
· SANS/ISO 21103: Adventure tourism – information for participants (guidelines).
Although LOtC is not classified as tourism per se, many activities that providers offer to schools fall within the scope of adventure tourism standards. These activities include but are not limited to; rock and artificial wall climbing, abseiling, flat and swift-water paddling, hiking, mountain biking and aerial cableways (ziplining). Providers of these activities must therefore conform to the requirements outlined within the standards, or providers may be exposed to charges of negligence in the occurrence of an incident.
There is no overarching coordination of the LOtC sector. There are several organisations that play an important role in various parts of the sector such as the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA), the South African Adventure Industry Association (SAAIA), the Adventure Recreation Association (ARA), Mountain Training Standards (MTS), and several church and religious groupings. Despite the presence of these organisations, many members of the LOtC sector recognise the importance of a better coordination structure which could assist with collective representation, guidance, standardisation, and quality assurance. For further discussion on this matter, or for information on SANS/ISO 31031 (FDIS) please contact me.
Nic Shaw
Chairman: SABS Technical Committee 228 – Tourism and related services
Contributor: ISO/SABS Technical Committee 262 – Risk management
7 February 2024
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