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

I dont know what to think. Obviously its good to have the opportunity to go on amazing educational trips . Should they offer trips if they are only achievable for a small % of children? 🤔 nor sure. My DC certainly won't e able to go on £900 school trips but we live in a fairly wealthy area and i hear nearly all school trips are over subscribed so imagine there are plenty who dont have such budget constraints. BUT the parents who have no qualms about signing up their kids to any and every school trip regardless of cost are probably those who go away at half term skiing and have several other trips during the year already. The ones left behind probably have fewer opportunities outside of school as well.

I am baffled as to HOW my DDs German exchange this year is costing £500. I mean, it’s a flight, transfers and insurance. I don’t want to say no to something which could be so useful, but £500??! I said yes, but that’s her birthday and Christmas present. Let’s hope it’s worh it.

Very expensive and not doable for most parents i know. Its far too much for one child and could be used to take the whole family away. 900 pound wherever it is, is a lot of money for a parent to pay out.

@ellyess - I am not uncaring neither can I afford to send my kids on every trip going. I’ve put in for a few trips for my kids but they are usually over-subscribed, only around a quarter of the year group get to go, so my kids have missed out and ‘had their educational opportunities crushed’. What a load of bollocks! School trips enhance educational experiences (as does any travel) but it does not crush the opportunities of others.

I've done many a school trip as a teacher. The teachers' places are funded by the travel company, not by the school or certainly the parents. The companies are aware that if this were the case then the trips would not go ahead. I've given up weeks and weeks of my (unpaid) school holiday to ensure that all children get the opportunities to do things they otherwise wouldn't. We also heavily subsidise pupil premium children and advertise trips years in advance to enable families to save.

It is certainly not a jolly from my point of view. Sure, I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it (who'd give up their unpaid holiday to do work for free in any other job?!) But to me, seeing their little faces on a plane for the first time or trying out delicacies that they would otherwise never see, is absolutely priceless. I've mopped up sick, blood and tears and had a couple of snatched hours' sleep a night, phoned parents, given calpol, bought tampons for girls caught out and too embarrassed to ask for them in a foreign pharmacy, I've dealt with missing baggage, extreme homesickness and failings out. But my goodness, the kids make friends for life. They talk about it for years to come and certainly learn more than they do in the classroom.

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

Because the thread has nothing whatsoever to do with the value or otherwise of the trip - it's about the amount of money being asked of parents for a school trip.

Value for money means nothing if you don't have the money in the first place.

I do think it's odd that time is spent organising these trips that a tiny minority will get to go on (and those that do are probably kids whose families travel anyway). Surely it would be better to have a less ambitious trip open to more kids?

And in that sense it doesn't matter where the trip is to-even if its good value for money I still think a less exotic but more accessible trip would be better.

It’s a huge amount of money! My ds wouldn’t even ask to go as he knows we couldn’t afford it. It’s the price of a family holiday for us.

My son’s prep school used to go to Washington State skiing for a mere few grand each. We used to think it hilarious and it wasn’t even educational. When my DS and DD arrived at grammar schools their school trips were a few hundred quid for a week in not salubrious accommmodate and very ‘adequate’ only travel.

However, for that they visited:- Pompei, Russia and Poland, Venice, the First World War graves, Paris and other cultural and historical sites. It was very good value for money and widened their horizons considerably. We did not have the money to take four of us to these wonderful places and were very grateful to the school and teachers for giving them the opportunity to travel and learn.

I should also point out that we never availed ourselves of the Washington skiing trips. What would the DS have learned other than expensive habits? He would have been better off reading some books for nothing!

@Ginfizplease thank you for being a wonderful teacher

If you can't/don't want to afford it then don't pay it. Its a simple choice.

I understand OPs point when they say "it shouldn't matter where it is"

Of course, a foreign ski trip will cost more than say a UK camping trip.

The point is, why has a state school located in an area that isnt known for its affluence, organised a trip to anywhere that costs that amount of money? Knowing full well that many children will have to miss out due to its cost.

If any trip, regardless of where it was or what it entailed, cost this at my DSs school I could guarantee AT LEAST 70% couldn't go at all. £900 wouldn't be feasible for a family holiday for a week for most of us, let alone one child for just 4 days. Many of the parents at our school are using food banks.

As a kid, I remember my school did something similar. 50% of the class couldn't afford it. I was in that 50% and I was laughed at and picked on for being one of the poor ones. And this was a topic-related geography trip that meant those that couldn't go also got a crap mark for the essay. It still angers me now.

I'd be very pissed off if DSs school did this, whether I could petsonally afford it or not, because it does exclude many others based on tgeir family's wealth, and I'd be making noises about it and raising the issue with the head.

@BloodsportForAll my child is pupil premium and I've been told there is no PP discount for his up and coming school trip (despite being given discount at primary school) ?

The sad thing is that the students who would benefit most from amazing educational opportunities that some trips can provide are the students who are least likely to be able to go.

I always used to have this feeling, certainly at primary school level, that the cost of trips were based on a certain % of parents paying. I did once ask the question of the SLT but it was ignored. I got quite resentful because I happened to know there were several occasions when friends readily admitted to not having paid up (even though they were better off than we were!).

Quite often now these trips end up cancelled due to poor uptake as parents aren't prepared to pay the costs anymore.

I did point out to dd that school skiing trip cost more than our family holiday had...

School trips are always expensive in my experience.
My eldest went on his first one 6 years ago. 6 nights in Spain just for him cost us almost £800. Two weeks after he got back we had our family holiday, 10 nights in Portugal for five of us, only cost £1500!!
He has been on a couple of other four-night ones with school that cost around £650-£700, and my middle son is going next month on a four night football trip to Portugal that cost £780. The only way we afforded them was to pay £100 or so a month, no way we could have paid the full cost up front.
As people have mentioned, ski trips are always even dearer. Luckily none of my kids have wanted to go on them but they are usually around £1200!

I have to assume it's not compulsory and is a reasonable cost for the location and type of trip, and the school is offering it as there is a demand, so I don't see the issue myself.