Death during school trips: Who is to blame?

BANGALORE:  Every child wishes to go to trips and have fun. But the Tejas case has made parents think twice before sending their wards for any excursions organised by school  authorities. Neither the State Government nor the Department of Education has any set of guidelines regarding school trips. In order to shirk away from their responsibilities, before going on a trip, the school authorities take undertaking from parents stating that they are not responsible if something happens during the excursions. That means, parents have to send their wards to excursion in their own risk. This “undertaking” has been in practice in almost all schools, not only in Bangalore but also in other major cities. This trend started recently after some untoward incidents happened during the excursions. The idea behind this is to save their skin from any sort of legal complications, and put the entire blame on parents. On the other hand, parents, with a confidence on teachers that they will take of children with utmost care, send their kids to picnics.Time and again such incidents are happening. So far, unfortunately, the government has not made efforts to make school trip ‘safe’ and fix school authorities for any untoward incidents. The death of any one or two kids may not make any impact for school authorities but the loss to parents cannot be measured. The government or the Education Department takes responsibility if any mishap happens during picnics organised by the government schools. But it did not have any powers to take stern action against private school authorities except issuing a show-cause notice.