In September 2015 forty-six pupils and four staff from Guiseley School in Leeds became sick as they headed for a ferry from the port of Zeebrugge back to the UK. In total, 80 students and eight members of staff were returning from a World War One battlefield trip when the illness struck, causing fever and vomiting.
With over half their number taken ill, the remaining staff contacted the local emergency services and the school implemented its emergency plan. The sick staff and students were taken to seven hospitals in the area after an emergency plan was triggered.
Paul Clayton, acting co-head of the school, said, "the magnitude of the problem was huge, but I am absolutely delighted that I can now confirm all are well."
Mr Clayton also confirmed that the nature of the illness nor its cause had been established, although reports in Belgian cited food poisoning. "We've talked to Public Health England and liaised with the authorities in Belgium," Mr Clayton said, "but we still don't have a diagnosis so we can't speculate."
Mr Clayton also said the school had implemented its own emergency plan and had sent extra staff to Belgium to help with the incident and praised their efforts. "It is the worst nightmare for a teacher on a school trip for almost the entire cohort to fall ill," he said, "so the team out there dealt with it absolutely fantastically."
The incident and how the school dealt with it so effectively shows how important having emergency plans and procedures in place as it is impossible to know when an illness or any other type of unforeseen incident may occur on a trip, even one which on the face of it seems a regulation visit to plan and deliver.
The nature of this incident, with it being overseas, meant the involvement of local agencies, including the Red Cross, and long-distance communication back to the base at the school in Leeds, thus giving the school a test for which it proved well prepared.
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