Are end of year school trips becoming less common now?

[Onendone]

My daughter's school trip this year has been cancelled and the school is organising a fun day instead. The reason for cancellation is changes to the PVG scheme and budgeting constraints. I just wondered if it's common now not to have a school trip at the end of the year?

My child's school is still doing them, rightly or wrongly. Lots of different trips with limited spots and varying prices.

I don’t think ours ever had a standard “end of year school trip”. Sometimes there were school trips but could be at any point through the year, often to do with a topic of some sort. And not every year.

There was an end of y6 residential which I think still happens. But nothing in particular at the end of the other years. I don’t remember having that sort of thing as a child either?

Coach costs are ridiculous. We don’t want to ask parents to pay a silly amount just to go to a museum in London. Even the museum being free, the coach came to £30. Divide that by smaller class sizes it becomes too much. We still do the residential trips but they have gone up in price too.

Our end of year trip week has been cancelled. It's not inclusive, particularly for less well off families. The costs are immense and the PP funding only covers a small percentage.

My DCs' primary school did a trip every year - but somewhere linked to their topic work. And it was never at the end of the year (even the yr 6 residential was in January!).

The are in years 11 and 8 now. My youngest has been on two whole-year day trips whereas my eldest didn't get these (maybe because it was still post covid, maybe because the head teacher changed). There are loads of paid for/limited space trips that they could/have done too.

Ours have never had a traditional end of school year trip. They happen throughout the year for each year group. I do remember my secondary school where every year group went to a theme park etc at the end of the year

My daughter still has hers. They have different trips to choose from or if parents can't afford them,they have a fun day at school.

Snap. We've not been able to schedule any trips not within walking distance since 2024, including classics like Year 6 camp. Like a PP says, it's not inclusive to ask families on low incomes for large financial contributions like these. Despite our PTA being active and fundraising whenever possible, it's just not enough, and besides, PTA money now pays for much more basic resources, sadly. Education funding is on its knees.

DDs school (secondary) has a "Festival" on the School field... the children bring in a picnic, theres games (optional) and music, and its the only non uniform day.

We still offer them. What is becoming much harder is finding something that is perfect for the children and affordable for families. Coach costs are through the roof so we use public transport but that isn’t great where we are so it very much limits options.

As a school we can’t afford to subsidise much, we can only ask parents to pay so much as many are low income and we are limited in how much we can fundraise and what we do fundraise is often ring fenced for specific projects.

My dc school has just cancelled their post SATS trip because of insufficient voluntary payments.

Also, I remember going to Alton Towers on school trips a couple of times in my youth during summer term. DS asked us to take him recently, and I asked if it was something school ever did but he says not.

Our school, part of a trust, isnt doing residentials or "reward" day trips this year. The only ones are geography- to do the mandatory fieldwork- we are rural, so nearest big city for urban landscapes and coastal for a level. And battlefields for year 10 history. Even though thats not essential.

We booked a trip in September, same trip for another class is now £100 more per coach. Fuel costs are making it too expensive to do.
Also any curriculum based trip can't force parents to pay - there are a solid 20-30% of parents per class who know this and never pay - in our school. School funding can't cover this. Result - less trips. Less exciting trips.

Think a large majority is down to coach coasts. They're shocking!

I didn't know that about curriculum costs, I imagine that decimates some primary trips.

Coach costs, insufficient parent contributions, unrealistic expectations from parents, trying to find childcare for whilst you are away, unreasonable demands from SLT, risk assessments, loads of extra work for no extra pay… just some reasons why there are less trips.

It's such a shame. School trips are such an important part of school.

I wonder if these coach companies are going to stay afloat if schools cannot afford to use them. They must be a big part of their business.

When I was in school we had regular trips.

We stopped a few years ago due to budget constraints. Children in receipt of financial aid would have their trip costs covered but as (sadly) the numbers of children who are in receipt of financial aid has increased, we just don’t have the budget to pay for all children to go on a fully costed trip.

It's mostly cost but the PVG thing does seem to be an extra barrier now. Schools has plenty of time to prepare for the changes and parent helpers checked but very few bothered, and now they don't have enough checked helpers to run the trips. Some will sight cost of the PVG as an issue but make sure your school know that checks for volunteers are free! Many don't seem to be aware of this.
Our school is using the train and local bus service more for trips too as private coach hire is so expensive. But from a risk assessment point of view that's slightly more risky and I'm not sure if they are doing that for younger age groups or just P6 and P7.

Such a shame there are so many barriers - school trips (at secondary) are often the most memorable experiences and add to a sense of ‘belonging’ the Ofsted and the govt have realised is so important for young people.

It feels like budget issues are slowly putting an end to school trips, which is very sad. How are kids supposed to broaden their horizons? I didn't know that volunteers can be PVG checked for free, I will definitely look into that and make sure that the school is aware. Probably too late for this year's trip though but good to know for the future!

I have named changed for this one but I will be careful with what I say.

yes we have stopped a lot because of budgets - but also staffing in school… we have half the support staff we had five years ago, so to cover a trip and staff school is difficult , we are also expected to do the extra hours for free , so school struggles to find willing victims that aren’t suddenly busy.

we do occasionally ask parents, but it’s a nightmare. Even with special meetings before hand of can and can’t things , we have had a group of kids posted to TikTok behaviour posted to parents what’s app groups , and a parent taking their child off for a special treat that the others can’t have. So we don’t ask parents if at all possible.

its also in our school on the teachers to plan and organise and it’s massively time consuming.

parents complain that the trip isn’t as exciting as last years (oh yes) they are not in groups with friends, one memorable complaint included a parent moaning that none of the adults would fix a child’s item for them (we all tried, but it wasn’t my specialist subject and we were a bit busy !)

we do a trip every year, and as a general rule we will have one thank you email and four complaining ones.

this year we have had three complaint ones and the trip isn’t for another month, so I imagine next year we will be told to scale it back even more.

My kids are in y10 and have had three school trips through secondary. They have their DoE combining up but nothing else this year. There has been a bit of an uproar as the usual language, history and geography y10 trips haven’t happened since Covid.