ESF policy document requires teachers to have up-to-date first-aid training The English Schools Foundation has tightened its procedures governing school excursions after the death of a 17-year-old student on a field trip last year. A coroner's court jury this week delivered a finding of accidental death in the case of King George V School student, Ivan Leung Ching-nam, who collapsed on a hiking trip in Sai Kung on September 21 last year. An autopsy report said the cause of death was heatstroke. Under a new ESF policy, teachers leading a school trip are required to have completed first-aid training within the last three years, which was one of the jury's recommendations. The teachers who led the Sai Kung field trip said they were unfamiliar with first-aid rescue. Geography teacher Carole Linda Beer told the coroner she had first-aid training more than nine years ago but could not identify the heatstroke symptoms. The other teacher, David Flint, had attended a two-day first-aid training course in 1991. St John's Ambulance senior training officer Lucia Po Lai-kwan said it was essential people took part in a one-day refresher course every three years after completing an initial 30-hour training course to ensure their skills were up to date. After the student's death, the ESF consulted an expert from Outward Bound and formed a working group of experienced teachers and ESF management staff, which produced a 78-page policy document covering school trips. ESF secondary school adviser Chris Durbin said before the policy was compiled, staff taking students on overseas trips had to have first-aid training but there was not a specific requirement for those in charge of local day trips. He said in the past staff were required to have 'an appropriate level of first aid for the activity' on day trips. The ESF has also created a system for schools to report any accidents that occur, and these will be reviewed by the working group. Each school must also have a group that is responsible for approving school trips. Mr Durbin said the policy document formalised procedures many schools were already following. The document requires schools to complete a risk assessment of the activity, covering factors including the nature of the activity, weather conditions, students' medical conditions and physical capabilities. It instructs schools to follow weather warnings and sets different ratios of students to staff, depending on the activity and age of the children. Under Education and Manpower Bureau guidelines, at least one staff member should have received first-aid training if the activity is exploratory, challenging or physically demanding. Mr Durbin, who conducted an internal investigation into the incident, said everyone had been shocked by Ching-nam's death and the incident would 'live with those teachers for a very long time'. 'They couldn't have done any more than they did,' he said.
