What would the reasonable man on the Clapham Omnibus say?

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=145594850&p=y45595556&n=145595610

Synopsis: National & International coverage of a school bus tragedy in Navan in which 5 school-children lost their lives and many more were seriously injured. Accident occurs 2 weeks before the State secondary school exams. In the first exam of the Junior Certificate the Department of Education asks students to write about “Travelling on a School Bus”. An alternate paper was available (always prepared in case of theft of exam papers). The Exams Commission defends running with the school bus question with a response I would paraphrase as “life sometimes sucks, so suck it up and get on with it”.

Comment:
As this is the FIRST exam in the Junior Cert, what impact would this have on the classmates of those who died or on those students who were injured in the bus crash over the course of the rest of their exams? What impact will this have on their performance?

The questions I pose are this…

1. at what point does a lack of consideration and incomptence become negligent infliction of emotional distress?
2. Should it have been reasonably foreseeable that the choice of question was likely to cause upset and distress to an identifiable group?
3. would it have been reasonable for the Dept and the Exam Commission to have considered this identifiable group when deciding to act (or not to act) with regards to this particular question?
4. Is it reasonably foreseeable that significant trauma revisited could impair exam performance in the identifiable group of students in question?
5. What does this do for the ‘value for money’ analysis of the counselling services that the Dept of Education has been providing for those students involved in the horrific bus crash?

In the case where a single student would have suffered an injury or trauma in a private context, they would not be, ordinarily, identifiable to the Dept or the Exams Commission. As such, in that context, perhaps the “life sometimes sucks” defence from the Commission is valid.

However this situation is different. Dept. of Education penny-pinching on safety issues in school buses may have contributed to the scale of the injury that these students have experienced. With such a poor choice of question the Exams Commission has added insult to that, quite apart from the potential psychological and academic injury that this outright sloppyness (I hesitate to use the word negligence as it has a very distinct meaning) might have caused.

Yes, life does suck. And sometimes you just have to knuckle down and get on with things. But did the Dept have to rub salt into the still open wounds?