Teachers, where have the little trips gone?

[missjeanbrodiee]

My DD is getting into teaching so can’t ask her yet. But when she was little (21) they had a lot of trips which were just a walk to the park to gosh, or catch tadpoles, or pick flowers.

Is it too much paperwork? higher levels of supervision needed? Too much on the curriculum so not enough downtime?

I’m interested

The only things that matter in education to those who make policy are things that can be measured.

I accompanied DDs class on a walk last year. Yr5.

They needed 2 parents plus two members of staff. Younger kids would need more. As we were all one big group, we didn't need school DBS as we wouldn't be alone with kids.
On arrival, I was given a long risk assessment covering everything from roads to nettle stings.
They needed first aid kits, high vis jackets etc

We were going less than a mile!

So yes, paperwork and staffing.

To much curriculum to fit in. The risk assessment for local visits takes literally a minute or two, it's longer to log in to the system but it's hard to justify being out of the classroom.
Our reception teacher does a bit more because it is easier to justify as "knowledge and understanding the world".
My year 5's just don't have time.

All of the above.

I’m secondary but can add: cost that parents can’t manage any more, increased costs of transport and insurance, paperwork out of your ears and no time at all to do it, the level of detail on risk assessments for the simplest things (how would you mitigate risk of covid on that walk to the park? Are the children trained in terrorist incident protocols?), staffing numbers needed taking staff away from already bare bones other areas, curriculums absolutely rammed with content we don’t have time for as it is, a huge decline in behaviour across all years (meaning you can’t risk your dangerous kids not pushing other kids into the pond or road) and significantly, parents who kick off about every choice you make and don’t say thanks when you give up your own kids’ parenting time to take theirs somewhere nice.

I'm 37 and we only did those local sort of trips once a year at my school!

Saying that, I took a small trip out recently and despite the hours of planning and last minute nonsense, it was lovely and I’m glad I did.

Nowadays you need most of the same paperwork for a little trip as you do for a 90 min bus journey to a major attraction, which makes them unappealing to do often.

The main thing is that there is just no time in the curriculum. Primary teachers are crushed by the weight of the number of subjects they need to get through in a week and all the intervention that needs to happen. There is no time at all to do anything just for fun or a nice experience.

Cover Costa is often the issue. Staffing ratios to be outside school are much higher than in school. Most schools are short of staff anyway and cannot afford to bring in cover for trips. Cover per staff member per day is £250.

It's mostly the paperwork and staff ratios (although these are school-dependent rather than official guidance if that makes sense).

It's changed even since I started teaching 12y or so ago. In my NQT year I took a group of 15 kids, year 10, to an observatory for the day, on my own. In my current school that would have to be two teachers.

I think back in the day, when I was a kid, it was easier to get community volunteers (eg a class mum) to increase your adult ratios. These days there are higher bars for vetting (which is a good thing) so you need actual teachers or school support staff to make up your ratios.

The paperwork is prohibitive. In a class of 15-20 kids, there'll be at least half a dozen severe health needs like allergies and so on and they all have to be risk assessed. (They also all get their own personalised medical kit that the teacher carries like a packhorse - I do get that it's necessary of course). Parents are slow at returning the consent forms. It's just a bloody pain and you never get thanked.

I haven't organised a trip, either day or residential, for years now and I don't intend to. It's just far too much bother

We get it but it's a very small village primary school with it's own wildlife area. I can imagine bigger schools in towns and cities might find it harder for those reasons listed above.

Wow this all so sad! Obviously I never knew the ins and outs from the teacher’s perspective but as we live in a poor area the trips the kids went on in primary school really made a big difference to their lives.

The point about behaviour is interesting. I suppose children are less used to being responsible while out and about. When DD was little she was part of a big group of year 2s who walked home alone (about a 5/10 min walk for most). The same school now says year 5 and must have a phone.

Paperwork. It takes hours and we do not have any time allocated to complete it.

i was supposed to be on a theatre trip this year but the theatre cancelled my tickets due to an admin error and to sort that (prob easy but more phone calls) on top of the paperwork just wasn't worth it to me.

Yes, it's too much work for the benefit. At out school we used to go to the library all of the time. Now behaviour is poor in some classes so we don't go as it's not safe. And I don't mean children with additional needs as we have always had to manage that. But general disobedience.

The you will get two complaints at the end of school in the ten minutes you have between home time and a meet about how Dave didn't get to walk with Jim and he's really upset and how Sophie wanted to get Mrs Pepperpot out of the library but it wasn't there.

I've taught ks1 for many years.

We have children who would be unsafe out of school. They can become distressed or run off or hurt others. This requires lots of staff we don't have and a risk that is large.

We have large classes and need many staff and parents to accompany us. Most parents work or have young siblings.

The curriculum is packed.

I have no time to do lots of extra risk assessments.

I have children who don't listen well and think it's ok to run on peoples driveways, kick walls and yell at the public. This is despite clear instructions on many occasions.

A little trip becomes incredibly stressful even though the positive impact it would have on many children is clear.

Saying that, in the past year I've organised a church trip, a library trip, a park trip and a trip to the local cafe. It can be done but it's nowhere as easy as it was.

My Y5 daughter’s current teacher is very enthusiastic and they’ve had several ‘little trips’ already - one to local park and war memorial as they were learning about WW2 and one with a wildlife expert to local nature reserve. It does require additional adult volunteers though, I can imagine some teachers think it’s too much hassle.

My school does lots of little trips. We are in a very deprived area and if we didn't take the children to the park/library/for a walk etc they'd never go. The children love it and look forward to it so much.

I agree with all of the above. The extra effort involved is too much on top of everything else teachers are expected to do. The goodwill they once felt that inspired them to go above and beyond has gone because they feel under valued and unappreciated by society and parents.

At my school we are incredibly lucky that we literally back onto a nature reserve so we go there frequently. As it’s next to us it’s covered under a generic permission slip for local visits and we have a regular risk assessment that we just adjust to fit.
We also have two huge parks in walking distance so go there a lot too.

But we are still struggling to go as we don’t have the staff anymore.

My children's school regularly go on little trips. They go to the ponds to see the wildlife like frogs and tadpoles. They go to the church. For a walk round the village. They walk up to the big private school for swimming or to join in with other events. It's not a tiny school, around 200 pupils. But it's lovely to see them out and about in groups.

Not enough staff in my school, in my class we have 2 teachers and 1 TA for 45 Y2 children, TA also covers lunch so isn't available at certain times of the day as she needs to have her lunch during class time and there are no spare staff through the rest of school as we have so many children who need 1:1 or small group support but no funding so "normal" TAs are covering those children. So it would be a lot more effort to organise than when I started teaching and each class had a dedicated TA plus extras throughout school doing interventions etc who could be borrowed on a one off basis for covering things like that.

I have just done the paperwork and risk assessments for a short visit to a local college. The paperwork took longer than the visit will be! Also as pp said staff ratios when we are short of staff generally and the biggest problem for all trips and activities is the horrendous transport costs. We used to walk up the local high street doing a tally of the different types of shop etc. it all feels so out of reach now.

so a combination of staffing problems, cost and paperwork.

Did a little trip recently - 15min walk from our school along pavements in 20 zone. 10 kids from various year groups. Little local outdoor activity run by an outside provider. We were out for just under 2 hours in total. It doesn’t get more simple than this. To achieve this I had to

Email in a request to SLT about 6 weeks ago.

Fill in a long form online for county for which I had to find 2 staff members happy to be put down as emergency contact numbers on top of the school number . That involves finding those staff face to face to ask.

Send in the list of names to the staff newsletter

Email the teachers of the lessons they would miss letting them know what was going on

Risk assessment for the walk down.

Write a letter to the parents- get that checked and put onto official paper by the office team

Print off and photocopy the letter

Get the consent form proforma from the office , photocopy it

Send the letter home with a consent form- chase up the consent forms including sorting a meeting with the SEN team to facilitate consent for a child in care

Organise a TA to come with us by emailing the SEN lead and then the TA .

A few emails back and forth with the provider to sort details

Book a slot for the mini bus with office and find and ask a staff member who can drive it to be on standby in case we has an issue and needed collecting -not expecting to use it but box needed ticking for SLT.

Find some extra hats and scarves at home for kids who I know will come under dressed

Email a parent who has sent a message in (sensibly ) checking I knew about her child’s potentially serous medical need

Sort out wellies for the kids who didn’t have their own

Sort out small first aid kit for walk down from the pile of bits in our first aid room

i did the trip during time I wasn’t teaching because the alternative was to organise cover for my classes and go into battle for funding for that cover for a trip that only benefited 10 kids. This bit is on me- the school wouldn’t ever ask me to do this but it would have been the final layer of faff if I had been missing my own classes.

We had a lovely time- a quirky little group of kids got lots more out of it than was on paper and I am glad I did it .

None of these steps take a huge amount of time but they all do take time and it’s easy to feel it isn’t worth it . It’s like prepping for going camping for a night or a month- the level of prep is very similar.

So is ours and at one time this was something we did too. But now the children are even more deprived than before.

When ours come in they get half a bagel for breakfast. Then they have to brush their teeth as that's something that just isn't happening at home. So there is eight minutes a day doing something that we should not have to do and that we didn't have to do. And that children in other schools are spending doing something else.

Schools can't pick up the slack for absolutely everything. Ours probably won't ever go to the library.

We have them. There is an SLT expectation of at least 3 local trips and 3 library trips per year. The pupil profile is an unusual one and lots of the children never really get to go out and about, so it's felt (rightly imo) important that they get to explore the local area, parks and playgrounds. I'm going on a stroll to the local park with my wee ones in the next few weeks and really looking forward to it! It's always a bit tricky though, as we need 4 additional adults (6 in total) to take them all out though.

The admin to even take sixth formers anywhere out of school for a few hours (let alone primary kids) is an absolute ball ache, plus the insurance, endless risk assessments, having to convince SLT of the educational benefit of the trip and covering any classes that you're unable to teach by reason of your absence on a trip are just some of the reasons why trips really just don't happen very much anymore, even though staff would dearly love to.