"Trip of a lifetime" half way through A-levels - good plan or not?

I would just say no. Simiilar was mentioned as a possibility by one of our DCs but there are so many negative factors, ;charity tourism, cost, binding commitments very early on, the marketing aspec of it etc) that I am afraid we quashed it without feeling the need to be tactful. The timing is n't ideal but that by itself would not have been a deal breaker.

My DD went on Camps International trip to Tanzania 4 years ago. Had a great time, and learned a lot. If finance is a worry, I certainly wouldn't rely on Camps for help - I think most of my DD's friends were parent funded (she went at the end of Year 11, so obviously GCSEs were her main focus).
There may be other reasons for not going, but I wouldn't let A Level study or EPQ work stop you/her. If she is organised, that shouldn't be a problem. (My DD of course wasn't part of the new A Levels, so I am not sure if that has any impact).

When we went to Tanzania on a plain and simple expensive holiday, we saw some of those kids at the airports.
They were very loud and very gap yah

We also saw Rwandan refugee orphans (they had tags on their coats) being relocated across the world by the UN.

I know which one I'd rather money was spent on.

If it has anything to do with “Orphanages” then read the stuff from Lumos.
I would also suggest she signs up for NCS after GCSEs and then looks at doing ICS after A’levels if she really wants to volunteer overseas. There are other ways of travelling, especially when at University.

I would also have a massive problem with Charity Tourism and also the pressured way in which organisations make money out of it.

Do the children understand the ethics (or lack of them) in these programmes and would it help if they had more information on that aspect?

Haggisfish
I agree.
And if she is the first to go to uni or you hit other criteria then she may be eligable for the Sutton Trust summer schools.

What sort of course is she interested in doing?

It was a good old fashioned no from me when dd was offered world challenge. I was utterly unconvinced by the ethics. I was utterly unconvinced about the feasibilty of fund raising the amount required from the limited pool of people and it would basically be asking others to pay for a jolly. I think it was 3k each. I thought that if 7 kids could raise 20k for charity in a year there were a million and one better charity uses for those funds than riding an elephant and daubing some paint on a wall.
I was also unconvinced that dd would not get drawn into politics and arguments about who was doing what.
And i rarely said just no to anything

I would maybe look at doing a summer uni school directly related to her course instead. Ime schools big up these things for uni applications, but actually they only help if they are directly relevant to the course they are applying for.

And there is a degree of pressure to sign up within a week of the first parents' information evening, which I'm not too happy about. They did a good job of getting students excited before parents had much information to go on.
That is fairly typical for World Challenge type big organisations catering to this market.
I didn't mean to sound so irritated but I find the way these people conduct things to be hugely manipulative, especially when people have to often pay a non-refundable deposit to secure their place within a short turn around.
I feel they rely on the excitement of teenagers and some spin about CVs to steamroll parents into agreeing and then after thry have your deposit they reveal the extras and because of the sunk costs fallacy and the understandable desire not to let your chilsren down, they have parenta over a barrel.

At that poiny they HAVE to do lots more fundraising to cover all the 'extras' and that adds pressure because otherwise parents have to worry about where the extra money comes from.

They have a very good business model but I think it shows no care for developing countries and relies on making money by exploiting people in developing countries and emotionally manipulating families in thr UK.

Quite apart from ethical concerns, costs and getting the kids wanting it before mooting the idea to parents... we didn't like the fact that DD would have to sign up in her GCSE year to something before she had even chosen her 6th form -

and would be unable to take part if she did not go to her school's 6th form - thankfully she had no intention of staying at that school, so we managed to avoid the "NO" heartbreak... some kids based their 6th form school choice around wanting to go...

If she wants to apply to Cambridge (and get in) she needs IMO to have a laser-like focus on her subject. If she wants to do this trip i guess she could find a way to link it to her subject, eg if economics/management she could start a business for her fundraising and write an EPQ critiquing the business model of World Challenge. It sounds like a quick way to get shit grades though.

I don't think a 4-week trip of some academic relevance is a bad idea, but not this trip with all the fundraising.

A language course would be a more useful use of time even if she's not doing an A level language.

I don't think many A level students do schoolwork over the summer holidays, I certainly didn't, and you don't need an EPQ. In my view it's better to concentrate on getting 3 solid A levels and some life experience - either by getting a job or doing the aforementioned language course - or both.

Fffion They do. And world challenge charges more than £4000 generally for the trips and then expect the students to pay extras on top of it.
Nobody on this planet could convince me that World Challenge give a damn about developing communities. It is an organisation building a business out of creating a gap yah experience to teenagers and making thousands doing so.
I looked into running a World Challenge trip and they can't even guarantee the WC leader of your group has ever been in thr trip country for a reasonable length of time. They are just travel guides selling experiences and ripping kids off in my opinion.

I know if at least half a dozen genuine trips through charities and churches thay cost half the cost of world challenge and do more good for their communities than WC.

I teach 6th form. I genuinely don't think they gain anything from that sort of trip that can't be gained from:

1. Travel without voluntourism
2. Volunteering and fundraising locally

A level is a step up from GCSE. I find students find the first part of y12 ok because free periods are a novelty. They usually don't work as hard as they should and then they realise that they should have worked more.

Students who are very organsied do lots of extra curricular manage well.

My experience of these trips is that instead of being fixed time (like a hobby or volunteering) they become quite time consuming and stressful in the months running up to the trip if fundraising hasn't been as fruitful as they like. Lots of fundraising events can be a lot arrange on top of college work.

I've no doubt students enjoy the trips but I think any student wanting to get into a top uni is taking a risk doing them over college and whether it is worth taking depends on the staff running the trip.

When big trips have been done well (similar scale but more expeditions than holidays masquerading as charity):

• there's been clear payment expectations
• clear outline of how fundraising reduces the payments
• how family size discrepancy and wealth discrepancy is acxounted for within the group e.g. small low income families often can't get £100 for a sponsored bike ride
• staff have a clear preparation programme
• preparation sessions are outlined from the start of the project until the trip goes
• ALL costs are clesr up front, including medical, kit, vaccinations etc (I know one provider of these trips who charge over £4,000 & then students have to pay extra for experiences such as safaris)
• the expectations on studenys and parents is explicitly outlined
• they account for what happens should a child's or family's circumstances change

And crucially, all information is clearly given before the students sign up.

Without that, i would be unhappy signing my child up to any of these types of large trips (excluding my issue with poverty tourism)

DS ended up doing well at A level - without being too MN about it , he is a bright boy - that said, he found particularly in one of his subjects the step up to A level took some getting. He did it and he did do a fair amount of extra curricular / pure enjoyment things. Others may have taken it more in their stride. I suppose I would be wary ( other considerations aside) of making a huge time commitment to one particular thing. But , you know your DD better and others will disagree with me - of course. I would try to gauge how much time the fundraising will take during term time. Over the holidays immediately prior to A level DS did do an amount of work on an exam submission which was not an EPQ but similar. IIRC being left with 2 weeks out of 6 of the Yr 12 summer holiday- given they need to relax as well , might have been cutting it fine. So the amount of work he did could be done in that time , but because he did not have a huge chunk of time booked out he was able to schedule his time so he had days where he did a bit of work and then relaxing - so not all school work being squished into a shorter elapsed time IYSWIM. Hope that helps - and all DCs are different . I have probably told you as much as can be useful from me ( based on a random sample of one boy! )

It's in the summer holidays, so should not be a problem.

Many schools run World Challenge etc every 2 - 3 years, so it is going to be in the middle of A-levels for many students.

Friends whose daughter did something similar found that the time required for fundraising had a far bigger (negative) impact on study time that the trip itself.

I did something similar (although it was 18 years ago!) it was the making of me. One of the best times of my life. Going off to uni a year later was a walk in the park by comparison! As long as she's organised and sits time between fundraising and studying she'll be grand. I got 3 A's. If that helps

See I like DofE but don't like voluntourism trips unless the people going actually have something to offer e.g. qualified teachers or medics going to do their job overseas for free.

Without being brutal, nobody is seriously going to think some reasonably well off kids from the UK can do a better job of building classrooms than local people.l who get trained yo build. By all means she can say it's a nice holiday but I'm noy entirely convinced that it adds anything to a CV thqt can't be demonstated volunteering close to home.

Personally I would say no - if she wants to do something genuinely altruistic there are other ways. I would worry about the fundraising time commitments not just the actual time on the trip , but to be fair I don't like these things so filter my answer through that. I would have thought the CV value is poor to none - whether it would be a good personal development thing is a different matter. But then with DS I've never been a big fan of DoE either - certainly not from a CV POV but I do have a friend whose nephew found DoE really good from a personal stance.