Field trips are group adventures to different locations e.g. museums, public offices, studios, factories, and more that allow students to discover new places, meet new people, and gain new knowledge. Students get to explore new places, build new friendships, and even discover a new career path.

However, field trips are only great when all the participants are safe and the parents/guardians have nothing to worry about. Using field trip permission slips ensures parents/guardians are well informed about the trip and consent to the student’s participation.

This way parents and guardians are not worried about the students and everyone can have the best time during the trip. Let’s explore how to use these field trip permission slips to ensure the safety and well-being of students.

Importance of Field Trip Permission Slips

School permission slips inform parents/guardians about field trip details, potential risks involved, and safety measures taken to prevent them. They also help parents keep track of their students’ health and well-being during the trip by highlighting important health information the field supervisors need to know to keep students safe such as allergies, medications, etc.

Using a field trip permission slip helps you and the school protect yourself from potential liabilities. The slip allows you to share all of the trip information with parents, including the trip itinerary, anticipated learning results, and safety procedures. It also helps you inform parents of the risks you wouldn’t be responsible for, preventing future legal disputes if any of the mentioned situations happens.

The field trip permission form ensures you collect all the information you need from parents to ensure students are well taken care of during the trip and prevent future disputes. For example, collecting important information such as allergies helps you prevent situations where students get an allergic reaction and you could be sued for negligence.

Essential Components of a Field Trip Permission Slip

Here are the most important details your field trip permission slip should have:

• Trip Details: general outline and purpose of the trip with its date, time, and location.
• Transportation Information: mode of transportation and instructions e.g. meeting points or travel documents.
• Participant Information: students’ full name, grade, class, and emergency contacts.
• Medical Information: any existing medical conditions or allergies, medications with the dosage and administration times. Also, collect consent for medical treatment that allows trip supervisors to seek medical treatment for the student if necessary.
• Permission and Acknowledgment: A line for parents or guardians to sign off on the student’s trip. Make sure to include a visible liability waiver to allow parents to accept the risks of the trip and consent to not hold the school liable for any incidents.
• Behavior Expectations: A clear description of acceptable behavior during the trip and potential consequences for any violations.

Other Components For Your Field Permission Slip (Optional)

• Photographic Consent:  Collect permission from parents or guardians to take and use photographs of the students during the trip.
• Special Instructions: This could be dietary restrictions, medical requirements, or other factors that trip organizers should know to keep students safe and comfortable.
• Teacher/Chaperone Information:  Add contact details of the teachers or chaperones supervising the students during the field trip. It allows parents to easily reach out to the trip organizers if they need to convey urgent messages about the student or check on their well-being.

Tips for Creating Effective Permission Slips

Here are some key tips to ensure your permission slips are clear, effective, and encourage informed consent:

• Keep it Simple:  The goal of the form is to give full details of the rip and get informed consent, so stick to simple terms. Also, focus on the most important information: what is the activity? Where and when is it taking place? How much will it cost? How long will it take?
• Make Accessible:   Parents and guardians come from different backgrounds, so consider making the form multilingual so parents can read the form in their first language. Also, enable accessibility features for the form so people with low vision can still understand the form content.

Digital vs. Paper Field Trip Permission Slips

When trying to decide between digital or paper forms for your permission slip, here are a few factors to consider:

• Traditional Paper Slips: Familiar and easy for some parents to sign and return. However, they can easily lost or forgotten. It also creates a huge pile of paperwork for the school and may lead to missing or inaccurate information entry due to human errors.
• Digital Permission Slips: It is easy to distribute, track, and limit the possibility of inaccurate entries. However, not all families have access to reliable internet or devices.  Ensure to enable offline access so people with slow internet access can still access it and fill it.

Sample Field Trip Permission Slip Template

Using a field trip permission template you don’t have to do any of the heavy lifting yourself, all you need to do is customize the template and you are done. The Formplus field trip permission slip template is a great example, here’s how to create a permission slip in minutes with it- 

1. Open the Field Trip Permission Slip Template.
2. Edit the template to fit your field trip details.  For example, you can add new questions or edit the existing fields.
3. Customize the form by adding your brand assets such as color, font, logo, etc.
4. Share the form with relevant participants and parents/guardians via email, direct form link, or QR code, or embed on your school’s webpage.
5. Set up notifications to monitor the form responses, so you know when an asset has been transferred.

That’s all! You have successfully built your field trip permission slip!

Conclusion

Field trip permission slips allow you to formally request permission from parents/guardians to take students on trips. It also helps you collect all information needed about each student to make the trip as convenient as possible.

The goal of the field trip permission form is to create a bridge between the field supervisors (teachers/chaperones), the school, and the parents to provide the best care for students while on the trip.  So, your permission slips must be user-friendly and contain all the information parents need to ensure student safety. However, instead of starting from scratch creating your field trip permission slip, get a head start with this permission slip template to collect responses from parents efficiently and keep track of all students’ information.