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 think much of this debate has ignored the fact that schools aren't stupid and that they will give some consideration to what their intake families are likely to be able to afford.

I very much doubt that a school that has 90% of children on FSMs will be offering these £1000 trips to Morocco etc.

Throughout the course of a child being at secondary school for 5-7 years, the chances are that they will be offered at least one residential trip that is low budget and affordable to the majority of families. I appreciate that even then, there will still be a small number who cannot go, but the bottom line is that children benefit from these trips and that benefit should be available to as many children as possible.

There are reasons other than money why children can't have these experiences with family. Those children deserve to be taken into account as much as the children from low income families.

"There are reasons other than money why children can't have these experiences with family. Those children deserve to be taken into account as much as the children from low income families."

^This

And to address the point about kids I ly wanting to do things because of their friends, I agree a total waste of money to send them away in that case!

I always wanted to do the trips for the trip sake, not because my friends were going. In fact, none of my close school friends went on any of the ski trips!

I nearly went on the school skiing trip , paid the deposit and everything , then my parents decided they couldnt afford it , fair enough . Very disappointed , but thats life . Nine years later , parents paid for my brother to go on the trip , same school . Bit put out , but my parents were earning a lot more by that point so could afford it .

OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos
I think much of this debate has ignored the fact that schools aren't stupid and that they will give some consideration to what their intake families are likely to be able to afford.

I live in a near/in a socially deprived area and the poorest area feeds into one of the local junior schools - one of their trip was £1000 + to India.

I heard about it from some parents you were agonizing about saying no even though it was completely out their reach. I have to say I wouldn't have wanted my DC at that age going so far anyway and I don't know if it went ahead in the end as no-one I knew could afford it.

My DC school is very sensitive to fact they have families form very varied incomes and that money is tight for many parents. You'd think that would be universal but apparently it is not.

Outraged - regarding your point about schools offering trips that their intake can afford. Sadly, that isnt true in my experience. My DCs' comp (low income area) offers a ski trip plus other foreign trips which are way beyond the means of the vast majority. The level of take-up doesnt matter that much to the school because they are just being used for marketing and at the end of the days these are just holidays.

frumpet - it doesnt matter to you but you still remember the details! I have no real recollection of any of the school trips my brothers did or didnt go on!

Erm, maybe frumpet just has a good memory, Gnome .

My last post didn't make any sense, sorry.

What I was trying to say was that holidays from PGL and others cost more for individuals than they do for groups.

Well, I can't argue with people's personal experiences, so I take the point that not all schools are as sensitive as they should be.

But, I don't think that's a reason to abolish school trips all together, because the schools do have the option of becoming more sensitive and offering more affordable trips if they are made aware of how the majority of parents feel on the subject.

I am going on my experience, and our local comp offers a wide variety of trips to suit varied budgets, and they subsidise the one trip to France that they want all students to be able to attend. This trip takes place in Y9, and parents are told about it on induction. Unfortunately, there's not much else they can do if a parents refuses to give permission for children to go for reasons that aren't about money.

I agree with some points exotic has made but i still don't like the idea of expensive trips. My issue is that they are promoted as 'educational' trips, trips that will make your child's future. This imo makes poor parents desperate to find the money and guilty if they don't and anything that plays on -poor- parents guilt is not fair imo. I knew a woman who fed her family noodles for months in order to send her ds to u.s.a. I personally think it would be better if they ate more veg instead or fixed their windows.

I came into uk at 15 for a week. We didn't really learnt anything. We took some photographs and bought souvenirs. We didn't learn the language in a week, we didn't apreciate the food. We 've learn more from watching English films and got motivated to learn the language only because we wanted to understand what the pop songs say. I've experienced the real uk only when i came at an older age and when i worked here. I'm not saying there is no benefit at all (surely if you have the money its good) but i'm not sure if the benefit is that good to jastify a poor family's sacrificies?

I think it depends on the school, out of term trips weren't promoted as educational at all. All our educational trips were in term time, clearly aligned to a subject, e.g. geography field trip, trip to see macbeth, available to all and funds available to ensure that nobody was prevented from attending for financial reasons.

For an individual low income family, the benefit probably isn't enough to justify sacrifices they might have to make. I agree with that, but I don't think that they should be denied the choice at all.

It is not for anyone else to say that a family shouldn't be able to choose to make those sacrifices if they want to.

I agree that advertising these trips as educational can cause problems. The fact is they are educational, but not always in the traditional sense of the word. As I have said before, there is more to education than subjects you can be given a GCSE grade for.

It benefits other individuals who are equally important and it benefits society to young people with as broad an education as possible.

That's really sad, Laqui. There was a woman on the iPads for preschoolers thread whose family went without a holiday, so they could but an iPad for a 3yo!

The angst really does seem to be felt by parents, rather than pupils imo.

Anyone who eats noodles for months so that they can pay for a school trip has got seriously skewed priorities. What's wrong with resisting pester power and saying 'no, we can't afford it'?

There was a programme about pawnbrokers on BBC1 this week - I don't remember what it was called - and there was a woman who had pawned all of her jewellery to pay for a school trip; she couldn't maintain the payments and lost all of it. I thought the same about her - mad. Presumably she is similarly seduced by other marketing and advertising ruses selling her 'must have, change your life' items.

That's sounds fine spoons

Sorry that not that's

adeucalione she had very hard life herself, she faced the perception some people have about single mothers, she heard all the talk about 'priorities' and 'caring about your dc's future' etc. She was trying to do her best. Most poor parents do.

Don't most of these trips offer an affordable payment plan, for if you did want to send your kids?

My sister has two teens in yrs 8 & 10 and they let her know months in advance for these kind of holiday trips and she pays something like £10 a week towards it.
The kids have been to new york, skiing in italy, to rome, madrid, paris and several other trips with school.

DSIS is a single parent and works in a supermarket, she is by no means wealthy, in fact they have only had one family holiday together due to the cost.

They might do, WeAre, but most parents on modest incomes are too helpless, apparently.

Not that there's any patronising bollocks on this thread or anything.

reading that back it sounds like I was being arsey to you, WeAre. I wasn't, sorry!

I was hoping to find out what it was that I was 'misunderstanding'.

Why could DH, who went to a private school be offered trips to places like Sri Lanka and yet his brother, at the secondary modern, could have nothing?

Did your DH GO to Sri Lanka though exotic? Why would schools need to advertise such trips?

All schools offer school trips ime. Whatever the type of school.

Even if the school didn't offer trips there would always be kids going on exotic holidays with their parents anyway...

I honestly don't get why schools go to all the bother,expense and upheaval organising trips only a few can go on.

Some parents believe any request from school is of upmost importance and they're letting their kids down if they don't pay for things.

Schools maybe need to be honest and say-this is an expensive trip that isn't necessary or crucial to your dc's education,it just looks good and we enjoy taking a few rich kids away on a trip we probably couldn't afford to go on ourselves-but then nobody would go on them at all would they.

As I said - right at the top of this thread - if the trip is in school time, related to the curriculum/educational - ALL children should go - even if some fund raising is required. Otherwise, state schools should NOT be promoting holidays for the few. Going skiing is not a necessary part of your schooling. And I say that as someone whose dd will go on a "compulsory" skiing trip in year 6. But at least here - the WHOLE class will go.

I totally agree Portofino