School trips which are only affordable to a minority of parents - just why?

[Mintyy]

Why do schools do this?

If someone can explain, I am all ears!

I am talking about non-leafy state comprehensive schools here.

Teachers don't pay because they are working. Supervising these trips is exhausting and a hell of a responsibility.

DS1 and DS2 did one "big" trip each with the school to places I have no interest in visiting (both USA).

They weren't that interested in the other trip on offer but did enjoy the ones they went on.

I don't find any of these explanations terribly convincing.

The worst thing seems to me to be that children who don't have wealthy parents but who fall just outside of the "pupil premium" bracket may be completely unable to participate in any trips at all.

I don't really understand why it has to be so expensive. I get that travel to Europe has a certain cost when you are coming from an island, but otherwise the costs seems to be ridiculously inflated.

My daughter did a 10 day exchange with a school in Madrid last year - cost per child €200/ £140 (they travelled overnight by public bus and stayed with local families) reduced by fund raising to €120 per child. The year before she went to Italy for a week for under €200 (actual cost of trip about €250, or £175, per student). Obviously what you're not getting at those prices is luxury accommodation, and the teachers have to slum it a bit too.

Our normal High school took some of their senior pupils to Africa this summer to build classrooms they spent half the day with a paint brush rest of the time it was a jolly i think it was 2k all Dd didnt want to go i couldnt have afforded it anyway. She had been to belguim was going to poland but that was cancelled they were a bit less pricey and you get 8 months to pay. I guess schools offer trips as part of the cirriculum i dont understand the ski holidays or the safari holidays they seem extravigant

Dds school do many of this type of trip.
Long expensive ski holidays, ten days in Spain AI
thing is, much as I'd love to pay for her to go, I am not prepared to spend our entire holiday budget on it. DH and I do God awful shifts in stressful thankless jobs and need our holidays to keep going.
Dd2 also loves holidays.
We have a camper van (old) and manage 3 fantastic weeks together every year, we all benefit from it hugely and if I paid for ski-ing we would not be going!
Dd agrees btw.

My DDs school is a city comprehensive. The kids that go on the trips come from very mixed backgrounds. It's not true to say it's only for the "rich" kids. The trip was hugely expensive but we had 18 months to pay for it.

I don't think it is comparable to family holidays or gap year backpacking. It would be relatively cheap and easy for the three of us to nick over to Rome or Paris or Berlin for a few days. No way would we go a family holiday to Central or South America. DD1 was camping in the rain forest, lived without electricity (no hair straighteners , lived on beans and rice for days and all the time learning about geography, politics, sociology and history. It wasn't "Fun in the Sun". The group of girls she was with became very close and supportive and have remained friends despite them all dispersing across the world. She will have that experience all her life.

I will be forever grateful to the teachers who gave up three weeks of their own holiday to give my child that experience.

I dont know if scotland has that P P i do know when dds were in primary the PTA had a fund to subsidise the residential they went on.

I'm trips fall into 2 categories.

Trips arranged for an educational purpose (sometimes more educational than others).

Trips arranged for social development and the 'experience' - often the residential ones.(which is often undervalued imo).

My school part funds trips for PP but you have to enquire - it isn't advertised. I take up the offer of half price educational and day trips. I feel that it would be a piss take if I take up an offer of a half price non educational purely optional trip. Especially as I have twins. It is these types of trips which would be the ones the OP is talking about at our school.

The trouble is, surely there will always be some parents who can't afford a trip, whether it is £50 or £500. So the effect of what some people are actually saying is that schools shouldn't offer trips at all, in case someone can't afford it.

The trips I have paid for my DD have been directly educational MFL and History trips. Furthermore they have been trips that we as a family (with much younger sibling) don't wish to make as a family holiday.

Travel broadens the mind. Schools providing foreign trips is all part of providing wider educational benefit. Widening horizons to different cultures etc.

(My DD gets to go on trips. But she doesn't have an iphone6 etc. Perhaps if we are banning school trips because some can't afford them, we should also ban kids from bringing in expensive phones to school in case other feel left out too?)

I was very grateful for them. One child can go when you can't afford a family of 5. Also we had a big age gap so DS1 could go to places not suitable for us as a family.
If you wanted everyone to afford it then you couldn't have any trips at all.

DS is going on the ski trip next year. There were forty places available chosen at random.

It's in the holidays and we have had a year to pay for it - I don't see anything wrong with it? Some don't want to go, some can't afford to, and some (like me) will cut back somewhere else to pay for it

I never went on a school trip, it was never an option. I remember feeling disappointed but it had no real bearing on my life. Should all those children in the 10 years I was at school not have gone on trips because we couldn't afford it?

There are tons of scenarios which have limited availability. That's life.

I agree with TeenandTween - if they were banned I would want to look at everyone's spending! I knew it would be expensive so I used second hand as babies- old pram from neighbour etc. I object to not being able to send my child on a school trip if someone wouldn't dress their baby in second hand clothes, has got their teenager a phone , expensive trainers etc.

I agree Mintyy dear. I don't know why comprehensives do it. Not right.

Trips like this are about expanding people's horizons. Like many PP have said, trips which are completely unaffordable as a family are sometimes within reach when it is costed as a large group school trip. It also fosters a certain degree of independence; going away without your parents is a big thing. I went on several language exchanges and a hockey tour to Australia when I was at school, as well as lots of local trips in the UK. Education isn't confined to a classroom.

teenandtween is right there is always going to be something parents cant afford doesnt mean these trips shouldnt be afford. Amongst dds friends parents there were lawyers a social worker IT folk a school cleaner and all the jobs in the middle so an ordinary secondary school doesnt mean people cant afford trips.

I used state education so that I could afford the trips - so sad if only private schools get offered them.
You know in advance. When they are babies and younger children cut down on Christmas presents- put it in a fund. Go to second hand baby clothes sales. Save in other ways. Put the money aside.
If you don't want to do this then don't begrudge those who did from spending the money where they wanted.

"Parrot, why would you purposely ensure your daughter is a PP child? For the alleged free trips? Don't you care that statistically she's very likely to do less well than her peers educationally?"

Correlation does not equal causation
May I suggest that my PP children will probably do better educationally than someone whose parents cannot understand how statistics work?

Thinking back to when dd was at school, in her 7 years in secondary, there was one day trip that we could afford. We were not PP,just working poor.

All of the other trips ran into hundreds of pounds we didn't have. There was no alternative offered. No educational day trips to back up geography or history - not a thing.

Minty, you seem to take issue with the fact that these trips are being offered in comprehensive schools, but comprehensive doesn't mean 'cater for the poorest'. It means they cater for everyone, including those that can afford enrichment trips.

We shouldn't deny all children something for the sake of a few, when not going on these trips doesn't do any harm and going can be beneficial.

I like that my DCs schools offer trips. Apart from France in Y7, it is not expected that all children will go on any trip, so a situation where one or two are left behind without everyone else just doesn't happen. My dcs have been to places that I don't want to go to, and especially for my ds who has sen, being able to go away without parents but with friends and teachers who know him has been invaluable.

Exactly ^^ state school doesnt mean poor or poverty

We seem to have got into a situation where school is seen as the sole provider and arbiter of what young people need to grow and develop. This is a fallacy. There are lots of ways in which young people's lives can be enriched which dont involve school organising them and dont have to involve major parental expense.

What the schools should be doing is signposting young people to other organisations (cadets, scouts, LA music schools etc) and then letting the young people get on with it.

In my experience young people get far more out of the activities which they 'own' than they do out of the activities which have been packaged up for them.

Was happening at my school all the time. Some parents worked for travel companies, so they treated their kids' classmates as target market. Plus there was a deal that if there is a large enouh group, teachers travel free.

The thing that grated me about the Africa trip wasnt that they were going to Africa it was packaged as a charitable trip it bugged me for months and months

I'm a teacher and our residentials are not exotic. They can be pricey but we open it up to all students on that course or in a specific year group almost a year in advance. Some students are subsidised but tbh a lot of our parents don't like that brig advertised as it can encourage bullying.
Students don't have to go on any of them except for the A level trips. We do have some that don't go because they can't afford it. We have some who don't go because they've already been. We have some who don't go because they feel like they're slumming it. (I work at a comprehensive with a very mixed social intake).

The prices have gone up a lot since I started teaching, but often that is because the specific hotels/ centres where we stay and visit have increased in prices. Plus we now have to factor in the price of cover into the overall price with can be up to £115 per teacher per day. (If only we got paid that!!)

It is not a free jolly for staff. I do a year 7 weekend residential every year. It's bloody hard work. You get no sleep as you're either on night duty shifts and are patrolling or deal if with nosebleeds, fall puts and tears or you are flat out from running around all day after them!

Things like cadets and scouts are brilliant, but they still rely on parents supporting those things to a certain extent. The activities still need to be paid for and children may need to be driven places, have uniforms bought for them etc.

I don't think just telling a 12/13 year old about an organisation and then 'letting them get on with it' is really going to work for the vast majority of children. Anyway, they can 'own' their own trips by doing things to pay towards them.

School is there to provide education, which is of a much better quality if it doesn't all take place within the same four walls. Schools are a brilliant way of enabling children to do things that they couldn't do with their parents, for whatever reason, and as long as there are teachers willing to provide the opportunities and parents willing to support the trips, then they are a good thing that needs to stay.

Reading with interest. Both my DC will do 'short' residential trips this year, one through school, one through an outside interest, costing roughly the same amount. Both are trips where the group with 'do' something [performing arts of different types] as a group, and thus cannot possibly be replicated by a family holiday. One also has an element of 'experiencing a different country', the other has an element of 'being taught by experts in the subject'.

On the other hand, we are going for a family short break to a city also offered as a school trip, a) because we would all find it interesting, b) because we can all go for not much more than the school trip and c) there is nothing that the school trip is doing that we cannot replicate on a family holiday.

The school does offer some very expensive 'exotic' expeditions every couple of years. DS has already made concrete plans for how he will earn the money we have said he must contribute if he is to go on one in 4 years time - and that discipline and approach is, from our perspective, much the most important part of the process, and not something he would now be considering without that eventual goal.