AIBU for £900!

[NCsally]

AIBU to think £900 for a 4 day school trip for 13/14 year olds is a tad excessive?? I would understand if it's a private school or even a school in an affluent area but it isn't! It's a poor area with very low wage jobs! Parents can barely afford school lunches let alone £900 for a trip which doesn't even include spending money etc

20 years ago it cost (my parents) £600 for the school ski trip. We were in horrid hostel type multi occupancy rooms with shared bathrooms too!! I dread to think how much they are now. (Prob £900!!)

WOW! 10 pages in and still the OP has not said the location of the school trip!

All she said was 'it doesn't matter where it is.'

Of course it does. No-one can answer the question accurately without knowing.

Where is the trip too @NCsally Are you ever going to answer this question???

Canshopwillshop
I, to use your phrase, "don't get" your attitude! How can you have the selfish and arrogant and uncaring nerve to write, in a public forum about the cost of School Journeys/Trips:
I don’t get the attitude that if some can’t afford it then no one should get the opportunity.
As if that was not enough, you want to crush the educational opportunities of the poorer pupils for once and for all and you say:
Secondly, why do those who can afford it have to miss out for fear of upsetting those who can’t!

I am so shocked that you say this! Why do you think that Schools organise Trips? Schools are not Travel Agents! The trips are not holidays. Read what Eyja says: about the £1000 five day trip for her dd.-:

"Her class were learning about the African-American civil rights movement for their History A-level, and the school put on a trip to Georgia and Alabama. They visited Martin Luther King’s birthplace and memorial in Atlanta, the church in Birmingham, Alabama which was bombed killing 4 little black girls, the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma where the Bloody Sunday protestors were violently assaulted by the police etc.

It was worth every penny - she came back utterly enthused and smashed the A-level course. "

I think it must have been a successful trip! An educational trip. Hence organised by the school! But very expensive! I wonder how the less wealthy children managed? Did they have to miss out on the trip and miss-out on "smashing" their A-level?
Remember - schools are there to provide education. A state school has a duty to provide equal opportunities to all its pupils. The trip is not a holiday it is for education. See what Eyja says:
"it’s not a place you’d ever go on holiday by yourself - surely that’s what schools are for. Broadening horizons, introducing you to new places and new ways of looking at things. "
Well said Eyja! However, did your daughter's school take everyone who wanted to go? Or just those that could afford it?

Schools are there to give equal educational opportunities to every single pupil and when offering a school trip, not one single child can be disbarred from that educational opportunity, not for any reason. If we suddenly decided we were not taking the children who paid in instalments, or we would not take the children with straight hair, there would be an uproar! It is just the same for children of less well-off parents. Children of parents who do not have as much income as the other parents are equal members of the school in every way. They must be given access to every opportunity that their classmates are offered. Including school trips.

I am horrified that there are parents who think it is ok to say that it doesn't matter if some children's parents don't have a high enough income to allow their child to go on the school trip. Listen to yourselves! Those children deserve the school trip even more than the children of parents who can find the money, because they have less support from home in Eyja's terms of "Broadening horizons, introducing you to new places and new ways of looking at things" simply because their parents can't afford do those kinds of things. Homes with more money can afford to take the children out and see more. The poorer children rely on their schooling to widen their horizons. They need more help from the school and must go on the trips!

I'm with OP - it doesn't matter where the trip is to. It is unreasonable for schools to put parents in the position of even having to consider such an expensive trip.

@Ilikeslippers Well you have a point, but it's excruciatingly annoying that the OP is point blank refusing to say where it is. It's very odd that she is refusing to say.

Why won't she say?

I don't know about anyone else, but if the OP can't be bothered to answer the MANY posters asking where the trip is to, then I can't be bothered to answer her question as to whether I think £900 is a lot or not.

NCsally. I'm with you. Destination not relevant. Cost alone too high for only 4days. 4days for £900? Of course our minds are racing wondering what costs so much and what we would think worth it - like a once in a life-time opportunity type of thing. But if you do it today, in a year there will be another trip or another child wanting a trip...

I am still reeling under the attitudes of people who publicly say that it doesn't matter if some poor parents can't afford trips, so long as the children whose parents who can afford it can go! So SELFISH! They'll be saying next that these children had better sit at the back of the class and maybe the teacher needn't mark their work, because, after all, they aren't as important as the others...

I am absolutely fuming about it! All the children in school have equal access in all the opportunities offered by the school! How can anyone say otherwise? The school has to take the strain if the parents cannot subsidise the bill for an educational visit the school is offering. I don't care if it is out of term time. If it is offered by the school as an educational experience then no pupil can be left out. If the school can't afford it they will have to devise a different trip.

Exactly snow

4 nights camping in the Peak District - £900 is an almighty rip off.

4 nights in Iceland including all food and drink in a very expensive country, hotel accomodation, an activity every day and the Golden circle tour - quite a good deal

4 nights in New York with museums, broadway show, hotel, all food and drink, trolley dash through the Macy's sale. A stonking bargain.

No it doesn't matter where they are going at all

Ten pages and I still don’t know where the trip is to....

Ask for a break down of costs, doubt if you will get one. The teachers and support staff will be going for free and full pay. It’s a total piss take, some poor parents have more than one child eligible to go, I wish all parents would just boycott these trips.

The teachers and support staff will be going for free and full pay.

I give up.

@Eliza9919
The teachers tickets are probably being lumped in to that price too.

Of course they are, what teacher in their right mind would pay money to look after group of other people's children, on their own time, 24 hours a day, probably over a weekend, with extra pay and maybe sleeping in the same room as a colleague. They are saints.

last post should say *WITHOUT extra pay

This is exactly how much we are paying for DS to go to Iceland with school. Could it possibly be the same place. Either way it's a dear do OP.

School trips are not compulsory. I am a teacher and can’t afford to send my dcs on the ridiculously expensive ski trip to Canada! My dcs have to make do with the cheaper more educational outings on offer.

As a teacher I can also confirm that we don’t have to pay for trips. On the contrary, we usually have to give up a weekend or longer of our own time, be on high alert for the whole trip, deal with medical, organisational or emotional emergencies and take our own pocket money. School trips are most definitely not jollies but bloody hard work.

@spanishwife if the teachers don't want to do it, I am sure a few parents will volunteer, for a free trip, all expenses paid!

(Depending where it is of course. If it's Bolton, no, if it's Canada, yes, If only the OP could be arsed to tell us!)

I'm with you OP. obviously if you have 900 to spend on a school trip you want it to be somewhere decent and value for money. But I think these expensive school trips, in areas like mine where many people earn under the national average it is awful. The pressure on parents, the disappointment for the kids who can't go on school trips. School trips should be able bonding with friends, experiencing new things out your comfort zone, having time away from parents and social media. Our school used to have two trips, the expensive one abroad (to France!) and the cheap one to PGL. The school would subsidise the cheap one for low income family and virtually every child in the year went. It was the highlight if my school year and totally improved my confidence etc. I'm happy for the school to have an expensive trip but there should also be a cheap one.

@suebreo

Oh, trust me, I wish parents would boycott them, tjen staff going "for free in full.oay" wouldn't have to go on -trips- work events looking after some one else's (often badly behaved) children for days away from their own families and children, dealing with poor behaviour, kids going AWOL,trying to smuggle banned items back, damaging premises, getting drunk or worse...yeah, tell you what, charge staff, we'd love to pay to do all the above....errr, in fact, no, scrub that,would we fuck.

Do you really think staff look forward to these circles of hell known as school trips??

@JoyceDivision

I bet if there is a trip to South Africa, New Zealand, or Madagascar, the teachers wouldn't have any problem going on these 'circles of hell!' Free of charge of course.

If the teachers don't want to go on these school trips? Don't go. Simples. It's not compulsory.

alittlesnow. if the teachers don't want to do it, I am sure a few parents will volunteer, for a free trip, all expenses paid!

You have to be fucking joking.

The ONLY people volunteering to do this are either a) completely unaware of what it involves OR b) would see it as a jolly and be if absolutely NO use at all.

If YOU think it’s such a great deal, you go and do it. Guides/Scouts will snap you up.

Once.

@alittlesnow You're deluded. I'm certain you don't know any teachers who have done an abroad/overnight trip. It's bloody hard work. It's not one minute of fun. Going to the Eiffel Tower with your husband is great - going with 30 kids, running in different directions, potentially ill, doing something stupid, ill, upset etc it's awful and extremely stressful. As QueenofCBA put perfectly " we usually have to give up a weekend or longer of our own time, be on high alert for the whole trip, deal with medical, organisational or emotional emergencies and take our own pocket money. School trips are most definitely not jollies but bloody hard work."

Re your other points, teachers can't just 'say no'. There might be pressure from the Head, they might be the leader in the dept e.g. trip to Washington DC and they are head of history, French trip, they are head of languages etc. Of course they 'have' to go. What do you think it will do for their careers and reputation in the school if they just say 'nah'?

Is it for M15 why cant we no were the trip is to than we can make a judgement if £900 is worth it

Just tell us where it’s to ffs. No need for all the mystery.

The DfE needs to revise its recruitment strategy. I’m sure if everyone knew that teaching was a passport to all-expenses-paid trips of a lifetime then the recruitment crisis would be solved in one fell swoop.