Five elementary school students of Banyumas, Central Java drowned on Tuesday as they were swimming in a river near their school.
The second grade students of SDN I Kaliurip in Purwojati district were identified as Fahri, Dika, Kurnia, Ade and Khoerun. All were boys. The school headmaster, Solihin, said the incident took place at about 9 a.m. after they had attended a sports class in the schoolyard.
"Upon finishing the class, the teacher told all the students to wash their hands and feet at the school's water container before entering the classroom. It turned out that the five students went instead to the river to take a bath," Solihin told The Jakarta Post Tuesday.
Solihin said the boys went to the river without asking for permission from their classroom teacher, who only learned that they were not among the other students after she entered the classroom.
"One of the students told her that they went to the river after the sports class," said Solihin, adding that the classroom teacher hurried to the river, only to find they had all drowned in a deep part of the river.
The bodies were immediately brought to the nearest community health center before they were sent to their parents. All were buried the same day in the village cemetery.
Solihin said the river, where locals usually go for a bath, was actually quite shallow, only some 50 centimeters deep.
Yet, he added, it did have several places where it was up to two meters deep. The boys might not have realized that, while swimming, they were being carried away by the current to deeper waters, and they drowned. "We express our deepest condolences and apologies to the families," Solihin said.
Nursolihah, the classroom teacher, expressed the same sentiments. "This is a lesson learned for me as a teacher, that we have to keep an eye on our students when they leave the school compound," she said.
The Banyumas regency police are currently investigating the accident, due to the possibility of negligence on the part of the teacher in letting the students go to the river without supervision.
"We are informed that the students did the sports class in the schoolyard on their own, without a teacher's attendance. The sport teacher, Tuminah, was absent that day," said a police officer from the Purwojati police station, asking for anonymity.
