To find the cost of some school trips increadible !

[letstalk2000]

www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/01/parents-pay-state-school-trip

I have just seen the cost of some of these trips and quite frankly I am astounded .

Those sorts of trips are entirely optional. You're not "expected" to pay anything.

Our school (state comp in a leafy, affluent suburb) came up with the bright idea of a Netball trip to Dubai, less than a week for £2500. They couldn't get enough parents willing to pay it, so it was cancelled.

I can't really get myself worked up about how other parents choose to spend their money. If they're happy to pay £3k for a child to go off on a trip somewhere, that's their business.

You can see the Guardian have asked the average income parents their thoughts (LOL). Or maybe £300k PA is only average income for a guardian reader...

And I thought £17.50 was expensive for my child's trip to the local RSPB place!

Thankfully DD's school never did anything as outrageously expensive as this. She did do several trips but I thought they were all quite sensibly priced.

In 2012 she even got to go to the Olympics. I can't remember the exact cost but it was somewhere in the region of £200 - £250, which I thought was very good seeing as it covered:

• the return trip to London (by coach)
• one night's accommodation (in a University Hall of Residence)
• entry to two events (football at Wembley and beach volleyball at Horse Guards)

Not only that but they gave us around one year's notice and set up a plan so that you could pay in installments if you preferred.

It seemed too good an opportunity to miss

Yabu, I want my dc to see the world but can't afford for all four of us to do it so school trips are another option. It's great schools even do this at all. My dc are in state schools, we are average earners so they won't get to do them all but we will make sure they can do one at least and they can help with the cost a bit too if possible.

My eldests old school do a trip every 2 years to New Zealand. It costs about £3400. It is always offered to years 9 and 10. Then they have to open it out to other years as take up is low. My daughter when she was there didn't even bother bringing the form home. That is about 3 years worth of holiday budget for us!

That's a 4 year old article!