To Be P***** Off at yet another expensive school trip

[meah]

Hi, my ds has is now starting yr 9 & dd yr 8, in yr 7 a school trip was offered but cost was in the £300s (i forget exactly how much) being so expensive i couldn't afford it and it left both kids gutted when well over half of the kids in their yr got to go. ive just recieved another school trip email (not sure which yr not that it matters) offering a ski holiday trip, abroad for 6 nights for £680. which would be fantastic if i where loaded!! Why cant schools offer school trips that are affordable to all like they're supposed to instead of making those whos parents cant afford it feel left out!!!

I would like some bullet points explaining why her DC in private education gets everything offered and her DC in the state system can't have any extras.

exoticfruits

"Is this the summary - or am I misunderstanding?"
"Communism didn't work"

As far as I can see, you have it spot on. I am very sad that people want a race to the bottom for all DCs in state education.

The points about PGL - I loved PGL trips but I know many of my friends would never have entertained the idea of going on one. It's a big deal spending a week away from home, in a foreign country, trying a new activity when you don't know a single person!

Also, PGL is a profit making company, no? So a week skiing with them I would expect to be more expensive than a week with School running the trip at cost and so you reduce the amount of DCs able to go even further.

Also it's about knowing about things. How many DCd are desperate enough to go skiing off their own bat to find out about PGL and ask for it? Where as if you are told about a ski trip at school it shows you that kind of thing is out there if you have non-skiing parents.

Exactly whois- I was a shy child- I went with the school but there is no way I would have gone with a private company.

it's also a fallacy that being ins bursary at private school precludes you from going on trips . at my sons private school his BF is on a bursary and the PTA are funding his crucket tour to Sri Lanka next year . we are paying 2k to send DS

PGL run trips for schools and groups as well as for individuals, but I imagine they're dearer. I suppose cliques of parents could get together and organise group bookings, but I don't see how that would be any fairer than the school offering them.

I will have to leave it and come back - since I am 'warping, conflating, extrapolating' in addition to misunderstanding I would like some simple bullet points.

But why renaldo, is it OK to pay 2K in the private system when all parents can't/won't pay it and yet not OK in the state system. My DH had a full bursary, it didn't include extras and my PIL couldn't afford them

And thePTA didn't fund it. And even if his parents had paid for an extra it was hardly fair if they couldn't do the same for his brother in the state system. It seems very unfair to say 'DS1 has the best education and he is off to Sri Lanka but DS2 can't even get to London for the day because it isn't fair - he is only state educated'. What is fair about that?

Exoticfruits has that summary of OhSienas view spot on as far as I can tell.

It's not a misunderstanding, that is exactly how you are coming across.

I actually think that most state schools have it about right.

Nobody wants poor children to feel disadvantaged, so a range of relatively inexpensive trips and opportunities are offered throughout the year, along with requests for voluntary contributions only and financial subsidies for those that need it.

Then, once a year, often during a school holiday, they might offer a single more expensive opportunity that entirely relies on the goodwill of those teachers willing to give up their holiday to facilitate it.

This allows children who couldn't do such a trip with their families, to do so.

Very few children go on all of the expensive trips, and it is a minority of the school year that go on each trip anyway; children unable to go - for a wide range of reasons - are in the majority in most cases.

I really really don't understand why anyone would want that provision to disappear - and I was one of those children who never went on trips, and am now a parent who has to be selective about which trips can be managed.

Surely someone who thinks that school should be a level playing field where parental income doesn't make any difference and all children experience the same thing would also be ideologically opposed to the existence of private schools which are like ski trips but on a far larger scale. Not actually send their child to a private school then pontificate about what the plebs should do.

I understand the ideology argument, I just don't think it is good enough to stop the school trips. Schools are microcosms of society and banning school trips won't change that, it'll just deny a large group of children opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise have had.

Thank you- I am still waiting to find out where the misunderstanding lies. I would have thought that my PIL were getting a superior education for my DH and so rather than heap cricket tours in far flung places on him, it would have been fairer to spend any available money on trips or extras for his brother at the Secondary Modern.

Surely someone who thinks that school should be a level playing field where parental income doesn't make any difference and all children experience the same thing would also be ideologically opposed to the existence of private schools

You would think wouldn't you?

But no, what's good for private school kids should be reserved for them apparently, because that's how they maintain their position at the top of the tree.

DH and his brother are a good example.
DH - bursary to well regarded private school - no extras but things like free glider flights with air training corp- top university.
BIL state secondary modern- left at 16 and got a job. (BIL now has a great job that would need graduate entry these days - but his own efforts- he was equally clever but just spend most of his early years in and out of hospital)

Where is the fairness if BIL just gets a drab education with the basics only and yet his brother can be offered anything?

I can just hear the conversation' well darling, you need to understand that DB is off to Sri Lanka because he moves in those circles'.

I don't think OhSiena's views are a lone voice at all. There have been plenty of people earlier in the thread with the same view. I was one of them. But gave up because real life intervened, it went a bit circular and frankly some posters were posting in a unpleasant, hectoring way.

Obviously we are not going to reach agreement, but there is no need to lash into each other, which is just what a minority but gathering momentum group have done a bit to OhSiena, because she's the main one on the thread at the mo with the no financial inequality in school viewpoint.

Wasn't the thread about an issue? I don't think because OhSiena's told you a few details about her personal circumstances (which she didn't have to) you should use the personal information to, well sort of attack her, for the purposes of scoring points.

I think I would feel very, very got at if I were her, and while this may not be anyone's intention to do so, that is what it seems like.

Fair point ovenchips, but OhSienas view is very hypocritical, and I think that's why I personally am finding it hard to take her seriously.

She is saying that it is ok for some children to have travel opportunities through school but not others. It's just that they can't all go to the same school. Which is, frankly, ridiculous.

Why is it ok for a child who's parents who struggle to pay fees to feel left out of a school trip that they can't go on, but it's not ok for a state school child to feel that?

If she felt that it was unfair that any children had educational advantages at school, then her POV would be respectable, but she isn't. Her admission that she uses private school makes it come across as if she wants the benefits of school trips to be reserved only for the elite. She says she has one child in state education, and I cannot understand at all why she wouldn't be pleased that both/all of her children will be given the opportunity to travel with school. It seems bizarre that she would want one of her own children to have opportunities but not the other.

so private school kids on bursaries shouldn't get subsided trips just in case their siblings in state schools might not get the same opportunity ? really ? how chippy some of the posters here are about others opportunities

OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos +1 for that

renaldo I take from that example is that yes, it is 'unfair' in the context of that family but ultimately it increases the opportunities open to as many DCs as possible. Which I am 100% I'm favour of.

If OhSiena comes back and tells me, in simple terms, what she means I may find that I am not being fair to her. At the moment it appears that in private education you level up to what the top can afford and in state you level down to what the bottom can afford (probably nothing).

I can understand how the elite want to keep it that way-it must be nice -but I can't see why the 97% are supposed to stay in their place-I for one am not. I chose a comprehensive with all the extras-luckily a school that understood that a lot of people want them. There is no way that I would have chosen a 'bog standard' comprehensive-I would rather home educate.

The school ski trip exists now because it has existed for decades. People can try and justify it but really it exists only because it does. It has become an accepted part of many secondary schools. Each year a few of the mostly wealthier parents send their kids. I believe it has no place in a school but obviously plenty of posters do.

I believe the later incarnations of the school field trip are really just demonstrating how good the holiday companies are at getting schools to do their marketing for them. They develop their own inflation and competition. School A offers a geography field trip to the Morocco so School B has to do the same or go one better.

The problem is that these exotic trips are very tempting. It is all neatly packaged and companies like PGL know exactly how to dress them to make them appealing for schools. It is all so much more attractive and exciting than going to a local activity centre like this one:

www.thegrid.org.uk/learning/hertsoutdoors/cuffley/index.shtml#brochures

(I include this because I remember it from my youth).

I actually think that the big exotic trips are really there for the school's marketing benefit and for parents to stealth boast about the cost of sending their kid on the ski trip or geography field trip to China.

I actually dont think the kids themselves actually care that much. If their mates are going somewhere then they want to go with them wherever it is.

Sorry-I keep saying 97% when I mean 93%.

Why is it ok for a child who's parents who struggle to pay fees to feel left out of a school trip that they can't go on, but it's not ok for a state school child to feel that?

If nothing else is explained I would like this one dealt with.

I actually dont think the kids themselves actually care that much. If their mates are going somewhere then they want to go with them wherever it is.

I don't think this is in the least true-I don't feel like that decades later. If your DC feels like that then there isn't much point in sending them-a complete waste of money.

It also still doesn't explain why private school DCs can want to go with their mates and state school pupils can't.