International school trips are a fantastic way to build immersive real-world experiences into any school program. They form an important part of a modern education for our students to understand and appreciate the world.
But before we grab our passports, we must confront a critical question: Do your staff have the first aid training needed for overseas travel?
The truth is that international school travel is far riskier and can have far greater consequence than any other program your school will ever run. Outside the classroom, you are operating in a highly dynamic and uncontrolled environment, dealing with foreign cultures, different laws, and standards. This contrasts dramatically with the structured classroom where support is generally a phone call away. When you are travelling internationally, emergency response may be hours or days away.
Often, international programs are being run by classroom teachers who have an excellent academic skillset and good intentions. However, this strong classroom skill set is not what’s needed for the practical and complex realities of taking students overseas, leading to a significant risk gap and potential exposure to massive liabilities. Most teachers, unfortunately, have never had any specific training in risk management for excursions.
We must learn from tragedy. In 2019, four preventable student fatalities occurred on school travel programs. Two of these deaths—one on a history tour and one on a language tour—were eerily similar: both students had an infection which coroners determined could have been easily treated by a doctor. According to the findings, delays in decisions, poor communications with parents, and inadequate understanding of the students combined to delay definitive medical care. What is an obvious and foreseeable risk to trained eyes can be completely missed by the untrained eyes.
It is inexcusable to rely on learning about risk management through osmosis or just making things up as you go. If staff are running high-risk activities domestically, such as snow sports, ski patrol members are generally trained at a higher level of first aid than most teachers. The stakes are arguably even higher when travelling overseas, where negligence leading to a fatality can expose school leadership to industrial manslaughter charges and severe penalties.
Cancelling international travel is a ridiculous suggestion. A more rational solution is ensuring that staff are well-trained and equipped to respond quickly and effectively to dynamic situations. This commitment requires schools to allocate money for good quality training and development.
Investing in specific advanced training moves staff from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, where they understand risks and control them. Safety isn’t paperwork; it is leadership clarity in action. This ensures programs are well run and memorable for all the right reasons.
If your staff are untrained in high-level first aid specific to international operations, your programs are simply too risky and should not be run. However, rather than cancel, these great programs, ensure that your lead time has planning up-skilling of staff included.
