In thinking almost 5 grand for a school trip is beyond the joke ??

[BabySharkAteMyHamster]

We live in a town with a massive, rich poor divide. A lot of jobs here are highly skilled so if you can't do those there's little else. It has massive pits of deprivation as well as very wealthy areas.

There are two schools. One being an academy in the middle of one of the poorest areas of the town but also next to an estate where houses sell for upwards of 500k.

Who the hell thinks these trips are a good idea ?? It serves nothing but to highlight the massive rich poor divide and yet again kids who have heard 'no' pretty much from the day they were born will be on the outside looking in whilst the wealthier kids swan off on a month long trip to south America to build schools and lord knows what else . Options are pay half now and half later or pay £60 per week for the next 2 years (( my food bill ))

Why the hell arent these things capped ?? £1000 yes, families could make cutbacks over 2 years and give their kids a chance to experience life outside their barrier but 5 grand is just an impossible task for so many.

Considering so many schools these days obsess over stupid details on school uniforms so that 'every child is equal' isnt it a bit odd they seem to think it's ok to constantly remind them just how unequal they actually are 🤔🤷‍♀️

And are they forcing you?

No

What on earth possesses people to write something like this? You almost have to have made a decision to miss the point deliberately for the sake of being goady.

thats a really expensive trip!
Check out turn2us and family action websites to search for funding/grants your eligible for.
I scrimped to get my contribution for my son's trip to china together... only to discover I could have applied to charities and local organisations for grants/ bursaries.

Gosh that's a lot - the most expensive school trip I've seen advertised at my child's private school in London is a @1.5k ski trip

@ariwa she's making a point, nowhere does she suggest anyone is being forced.

Sounds like one of the teachers fancies a jolly. Since the teachers don't pay and use this as a way to take a week out of school and see another country. Before the teachers jump up and down, friend who happens to be a teacher said that they all love to volunteer for trips with the older children who basically are kept busy with so many activities that they have a great time.

I have never heard of one costing £5000. Where are they going?

Boulty
No trip I have been on has been a jolly. Almost all residential trips at my last few schools have been the last couple of days of term and the rest was in the holidays so staff were giving up their holidays for the trip to run.
Not once on any of the trips have I been able to go off and do my own thing. Sure we've been able to sit in a cafe with work friends for an hour or so on occasional days but that's it.
The only time I've known people have larger chunks of time is if they were staffing PE ones where the sessions were ran by specialist coaches. Even then, they were expected to be waterside at all times in case of emergency.

I enjoy the trips and tend to have a great time but they're not some sort of funded holiday. If anything all the staff I've done them with have ended up out of pocket and out of holiday time.

All that money for PE interest! No way. As for all thecash raised by school students to go help build a school ( usually a couple of breeze block rooms) etc it would probably cost a lot less than all the fares and whatnot to build a school and hospital. A lot of those types of projects are religious based with whatever religion taking the credit for all the help. Sure there are plenty projects in the UK needing help.

So I'm from the US and I'm just now learning that we do school trips very different. I'm not sure what grade or ages that take these trips but are you freaking serious?!?!
That seems crazy outrageous to me.At the end of the school year the younger grades go to the zoo and the park as a "field trip".My oldest graduated this past school year and their "Senior Trip" was to Six Flags in Tx(we live in Oklahoma,about 3 hours away). They had to pay $40.

Can y'all please tell more about these types of trips OP is talking about?

(I didn't intend to make it about me, just sharing what we do here in our small town).

I hate this too.
I haven’t read all the replies, but at my comprehensive school in the 80s the school ski trip was kept at a price where a lot of families could potentially save and afford it, and a lot of the kids who went, were first time skiers who didn’t do it with their family.
We went there and back on a coach to Italy and stayed in a cheap hotel, 4 or 6 to a room with cheap half board, think a Golden Delicious for pudding. We all had a riot and many of us went on to ski as adults.
My daughter’s school ski trip was to North America, in a 4* hotel promising 2 queen sized beds per room. It was a fortune, more than we spend skiing as a family of 4. She didn’t go. I can’t imagine any family that wasn’t very wealthy sending their child on that trip.

Mymomsbetterthanyourmom
That is my experience of school trips in the US too, give or take.

We were the ‘poor’ parents hanging on by our finger tips and eating baked beans to send our kids to decent preps to give them the chance of an unPC proper grounding that we got for free in 1960’s state primaries. The trips were absurd. A skiing trip to Washington State for £ thousands was typical. We just told our kids we couldn’t afford it. We coughed up later for cut price grammar trips to Belgium war graves, Roman ruins, a concentration camp, European art galleries and so on.

You have to pick your battles.

Not sure who is more screwed over in trips like these, the idiots who think they’ll make awesome builders from 16 year old kids or the poor native sods on 2pound a day that have to go in at night to redo the farcical building efforts...
Trips like this make countries in Africa some kind of gawping spectacle for patronising white saviours.

It would depend on how long you get to save up for the trip! My brother took part in a school trip to Peru but they gave the children 3 years to save up. There was a lad from the local council estate who went as his Mum saved all his child benefit up and paid it to the school in weekly instalments. My brother by no means came from a wealthy family but he forewent other things in order to be able to go to Peru and later Kenya! A fantastic opportunity :)

A lot depends on the parents determination to enable their child to go and on how long you are given to save up for the trip!

When I was at college, I went on a month long trip to war torn country to help with aid, house building, working with orphans etc. which cost around £4000 (it was 10 years ago). My parents couldn’t afford to put money towards it so I fundraised and worked my butt off (paper round, car washing, odd jobs for neighbours, Christmas present wrapping) to get the money together.
£5000 is a lot of money, but if it’s important for the child to do it, and it really was for me, then they need to take the responsibility of locating the money. It’s a life changing experience, and one that forces you to grow up and re-evaluate yourself.

YANBU OP

Completely ridiculous!

How about darling children a week helping feed the homeless,working in a food bank or if you need to go abroad spend time in a poverty stricken country helping build something useful

Interesting that nobody's answered the many questions around what vital, specialist skills they feel the youngsters are able to offer. I guess there are always more menial tasks they could help with, but IME asking for these is almost a guarantee of a day spent on the phone

I'll not complain again about DS's £86 overnight residential trip!

thatmakesmehappy
It sounds like a life changing experience for you. As with many of these trips though, the focus is on western teenagers leaving feeling full of beans and satisfied they've saved some.poor people.

What could a college student offer in terms of international aid that a specialist couldn't?
What could an unskilled college student do in terms of building that a local builder couldn't do?
What do unqualified college students offer orphans in a war zone beyond a revolving door of faces and a game of football?

I don't doubt you put in a lot of work to do the trip and had the best of intentions, but £4000 could do a lot more in many of these places in the hands of specialists and local people rather than British teens who want a trip of a lifetime.

What specifically are they going to achieve?

I suggest you email the teacher politely tomorrow morning asking about this trip abroad for volunteering. Find out if it’s compulsory or optional. If it’s the latter then I suggest that you politely tell them no thank you we’re looking at other volunteering options locally instead. It seems like a lot of money being essentially wasted for no reason really.

Maisy Pops
Most of what we paid was a donation to the charity. Plus, they got free labour in distributing aid to families. The majority of those who went had experience working with young people, so it wasn't just a 'game of football', we ran structured activities, provided food for the children who came and provided each child with school supplies and sanitary items.

I don't disagree with what you say about the revolving door of faces and skilled tradesman, but as a result of me having been out there, I returned home and continued to fund raise for the charity, which I likely wouldn't have done if I hadn't been there and seen it for myself.
There are some things you have to see first hand, to then find fire to fight for them.

Goodbyestranger
No I have never been to Auschwitz, I did know two men who where held by the Nazi's during WW2, and involved in marches across Germany during 1944/45. Plus 1 who was in Japanese Burma camps, and knew "Tenko" women.
I did say they where important historical sites and very important to Jewish and survivor families.
But what did the students from The Purse school learn from their visit, certainly not respect, we know people who say they spent a morning there, and then the afternoon elsewhere, didn't feel they had enough time to take it all in.

Whilst 1450 students from East Yorkshire, over 3 days got to spend 3 full days listening, questioning and reliving 3 holocaust survivors experiences. My sons still mention the horror of listening to an old lady describing how she ate her sister's food, after her sister died from starvation in her arms, how they stole cloths of dead camp mates, at risk of execution, just to keep slightly warmer. How the Romany lady (teenager) worked in the furnace room which burnt bodies. It drove my 6 foot 2 inch 13 stone rugby playing son to tears. He asked if he could hug both survivors, to say sorry.
Not sure 3 hours at Auschwitz could have given him the same horrific insight, I sure non of his school would disrespect a Holocaust site.

thatmakesmehappy it's great that you still fundraised when you got back, reports suggest that very few do this so it's wonderful that you stuck with it

You didn't say, though, what was done that couldn't have been done by the locals, and which might have helped their own development?

And while I appreciate you may have been told that "most of what was paid was a donation to the charity", are you absolutely confident this was so? (obviously ignore this if you paid it over yourself rather than the organiser claiming they'd done it)

MaisyPops our school’s PE department are taking 100 under 12’s skiing during the Easter holidays. Meaning they are working, away from their own families and with a huge amount of responsibility. They get an hour or two a day on the slopes by themselves whilst the kids are in lessons but are then in loco parentis from early morning until they all go to bed at God knows what time. After which, I expect they will be replying to texts from anxious parents wondering if little Johnny is OK 😂.

I’m very grateful to them and don’t for a minute think it’s going to be a jolly.