Case Study for Boarding Leaders Dorm Fires, Night-time Transitions, and Staff Visibility Disclaimer: This summary is for general information and professional reflection only. It does not constitute legal or safety advice. Always consult qualified local authorities before changing emergency or supervision practices. What happened (summary of an anonymised case) In 2019, during a school-organised trip …
Dorm Fires, Night-time Transitions, and Staff Visibility
Disclaimer: This summary is for general information and professional reflection only. It does not constitute legal or safety advice. Always consult qualified local authorities before changing emergency or supervision practices.
What happened (summary of an anonymised case)
In 2019, during a school-organised trip to Spain, a boarding student returned to their accommodation for the evening. The student had been placed through a billeting arrangement.
Billeting is the practice of placing students with local families during trips or exchanges – a long-standing model built on goodwill, trust, and community connection between school, host, and family.
Everything, on paper, was in order.
The moment
At some point that evening, the student was alone in their room. What followed was not reckless behaviour. It was not misconduct. It was a moment. From an upper floor, the student fell. Details are unknown or undisclosed. The incident was ruled an accident.
The uncomfortable truth
Billeting has always relied on trust and goodwill. Trust that the home is safe, the environment is understood, and that risks are minimal or well understood. But in contemporary settings, this assumption is increasingly being questioned.
Because a home can be welcoming but still unfamiliar; a space can be approved but not fully risk-assessed; and a student can be sensible but still act in ways we cannot predict.
Teenagers do not always assess risk the way adults do. They act quickly. They improvise. They assume safety, even in unfamiliar places. The best laid plans, don’t always account for real behaviour.
What this means for schools
Billeting extends the school environment beyond its walls, but it does not extend the school’s visibility or control in the same way. And that is where risk lives.
Schools are increasingly being asked to demonstrate not just intent, but visibility – particularly when students are off-site. This is where systems that track student movement and provide real-time awareness become critical.
It also raises broader questions around duty of care and supervision beyond the physical campus
Increasingly, schools are being forced to reconsider how thoroughly environments are assessed, what “suitable accommodation” really means, and whether traditional trust-based models are still sufficient in today’s litigious society.
A note on waivers and indemnity: It is common practice for schools to ask parents to sign consent forms or waivers for trips. However, across jurisdictions – including Australia, UK, much of Europe, and the United States – these do not remove a school’s duty of care.
In the United States, waivers can offer limited protection in some contexts, but they are generally not enforceable where negligence, poor supervision, or safeguarding failures involving minors are concerned.
Courts have generally found that a school’s duty of care is not-delegable. Responsibility cannot be signed away by a parent. Waivers may acknowledge risk, but they do not indemnify negligence.
In simple terms: A signed form does not protect a school if reasonable precautions were not taken.
But this raises an important question:
Who defines what is “reasonable”?
It is not defined by the school!
It is defined after the fact – by a court, regulator, or legal standard, based on what a reasonable school, with similar resources and responsibilities, should have anticipated and done in the same situation.
This includes known risks, foreseeable behaviour (especially of teenagers), the environment provided, and the level, including experience, of supervision expected.
In many cases, what feels reasonable at the time is judged very differently in hindsight. We all know the phrase “Hindsight is 20/20”
Final thought – What defines negligence?
Negligence is not judged by what the school intended. It is judged by what a reasonable school would, or should have anticipated and done in the same circumstances. Again “Hindsight is . . .”
Importantly, it is not assessed from the school’s perspective, but from the perspective of the court, the regulator, and the reasonable outsider, who might not always present as “reasonable” from the schools perspective!
Looking back, the question is simple: Was this risk foreseeable, and was enough done to prevent it? This can still be mitigated, it just takes a little more preparation which normally involves a little more cost. For example in the above scenario an independent Risk Assessment may have been carried out on each of the accommodation facilities of the students. Transport conditions listed, including private vehicles to be used, student allergy conditions shared in advance and discussions on safety of pets in houses. It may mean a day or two’s work for someone but still cheaper than paying full accommodation prices and of course these arrangements are in most cases reciprocal.
Because in boarding, negligence is rarely about what happened. It is about what should have been seen before it did happen. Us boarding people – we are known for having eyes in the back of our head – we just have up our “A game” now!
