Scenarios
Independent Schools
23/08/2007Freak tragedy on the Isle of Wight
Six staff have taken a party of 30 Year 4 girls to the Isle of Wight for a seven-day adventure and field studies trip. The school has been before and it has been a huge success.
The trip has a bad start. On day one, two nine-year-old girls collide while quad biking. One suffers a cut face and bruising, the other sustains a nasty fracture of her left arm. Both are driven back to London by a member of staff. One girl told her parents that no-one was really supervising her at the time. In fact, the entire party was pretty closely supervised, they were not all on quads at the same time and everyone had safety gear. But, inevitably, you can't be with the children every second as they whizz round the track. It was just an unfortunate accident. However, you've had a couple of fractious phone calls with the girls' parents.
But worse is to come. At lunchtime on day four, nine-year-old Vanessa Lee dies in a freak accident on Black Gang Chine beach on the south of the island. The entire party was fossil hunting on the beach when Vanessa was caught by a land-slip. Several thousand tons of blue slipper clay sloughed away from the notoriously unstable cliff and Vanessa was engulfed. You'd seen the signs warning not to go near the base of the cliffs and you'd warned the children. Vanessa wasn't even close but this was a big slip after two weeks of rain.
The alarm is raised by other beachcombers who tear at the clay with their bare hands but she's found dead a few minutes later. In the confusion one child, Katie Cheung, phones home on her mobile. Her parents are friendly with Vanessa's - both are wealthy Chinese restaurateurs - and within minutes they are on the phone.
News of the tragedy is all over the island within an hour or so. As you wait outside the funeral parlour for Vanessa's body to be brought back you are approached by a freelance broadcaster with a digital camera who has suddenly seen a very good way of covering the cost of his holiday. He's already spoken to Katie's parents and knows about both accidents.
You are the teacher in overall charge.
© Alexander Macdonald 2007
