School trip - what is a reasonable cost?

[oblada]

Y6 school trip. Our school is asking for close to £300 for the end of year school trip (2 nights away). It doesn't include transport which is covered with fundraising.
Now I can't complain too much, I can probably afford it. I don't have £300 to burn but I can manage.
But it feels wrong. Especially at the moment.
We're in the North West. Not an affluent part of the country.
I think I have made up my mind about what to do but I would be interested to see what everyone thinks generally on the cost. School is adamant it is a reasonable cost. Most people I discuss it directly with tend to agree with me (but maybe they don't really won't knows).
My own view is that up to £150 per kid is relatively affordable for most, in installments, and should be the max budget for a school trip. Whatever the kids do together will be unforgettable to them. They don't need millions of activities crammed in.
But is that unreasonable? Are other school able to do trips for cheaper than £300 per kid? Our weekends away are far cheaper than £300 per person. Now we don't have to worry about the safety aspects etc but then I'd think they'd be savings in the number of kids involved.

So drama, music, a variety of languages, and now school trips should only be for the privately educated?

Inadvertently you may be helping parents who can't manage to pay that much. Some schools up the cost so that they can cover the cost of any families that day they can't afford it so they all get to go in the end.

Schools are categorically not allowed to do this. There has to be a clear costing/budget - and, as I mentioned above, any overspend of over £5 by a parent has to be refunded to them.

We've just been asked for £1050 for a 3 night trip abroad (short-haul)

Those saying the max cost should be about £150 a child, can you actually find or suggest any activity centres offering this sort of cost? Could you actually plan a UK holiday for £40 a day for a large group (some of the money will have to be spent on insurance costs etc)?

The thing with having teachers lead all activities is that you then get issues with staffing ratios. When you have an instructor present for these activities, they obviously count towards adult:child ratios, as do overnight staff at e.g. a PGL centre.

If you go for a cheaper option, where you go to a destination with no staff and teachers are supervising all activities, then the school needs to also provide enough staff to meet ratios, usually somewhere between 1:10 to 1:15 for this sort of ratio. If those staff are other teachers or TAs at the school, then it's likely the school will need to pay for cover for those staff- which again comes at a cost!

If that's what it leads to then there is an issue with state funded schools and for parents to go into debts for trips or for a few kids to miss out is surely not the solution. I don't want to contribute to the poorer children feeling even more isolated or to parents going into debts if I'm honest. In public school it should be everyone goes and people should not be having to get into debt to subsidise activities. After all the principle of public school is that it is free...

I think you mean state school, not public school.

They would love orienteering or mountain climbing or swimming for instance as much as going to Harry Potter World or Thorpe Park.

The thing is, none of those things are cheap either and once you add coach hire/fuel, entry fees and insurance-can soon be just as pricey.

That seems expensive to me. I've just had details of a two night residential in Feb and it's £95 all inclusive. The week long residential my DS did in Y6 was under £300. It's a lot given everybody is struggling currently.

Yes sorry meant state school...

Ours Costa the same this year but is for 5 days. We were given the option to vote for this or a (better) trip for £500. Most inevitably chose the cheaper option. Our school said they were struggling to find anything at a reasonable price as quite a few centres they’d used in the past had closed during covid and never reopened. Wait until you get to secondary.Weve just had a letter about a 3 day trip to France for £600

My dd's year 6 trip was £300 ten years ago, which caused a stink then. With inflation yours seems like a bargain.

Our 2 night residential for the yr 5&6s cost £165. That was difficult for us to find and we didn't plan on sending him but school allowed a very extended payment plan to enable him to go.

"I am not aware of school offering to help those who can't afford it. Certainly hasn't been mentioned."

They'll be talking to their fsm/pp families.

Do you really think they should've cancelled it once they realised how much the price had gone up? Because it may have been too late to find alternatives for this year. I think that, if it's optional, if families can pay in instalments, if they are subsidising the cost for the lowest income families, then they are doing their best to see it go ahead after two years of disruption.

School staff don't get paid extra for going on residential trips-they might get a day off in lieu of going if they're lucky.

Don’t forget that any teachers or TAs that have volunteered for the trip will need supply cover back in school. Budgets are so tight at the moment (due to inflation & doubling fuel costs, I don’t think that schools & businesses have access to the capped gas & electricity tariffs & financial help that domestics users have) that there isn’t the funding that may have been available last year to pay for those supply staff costs without tacking those costs onto the total price for the trip.

This is especially acute in a secondary setting where you may be taking your entire Year 8 cohort out of school, but the staff on the trip will have been teaching across all year groups for the 2-3 days they’ll be away from the premises.

I agree, it’s a lot. I paid roughly the same for my son’s Year 11 history trip to Ypres & Normandy for 3 nights back in 2007(ish). But it was a very different world back then. You only need to track your own household bills over the past 6 months to see the increase in the cost of living. Schools are in an identical, if not worse, situation.

Price of everything is going up. It's been in the news a lot.

DS had an A level geography trip cancelled because the price had gone too high and the teachers felt it couldn't be justified.

OP are you thinking the school are over charging you and looking to make a profit? Because I highly doubt it. It's much more likely that they're simply passing on the costs they've been given.

Ask the school to break down the cost for you-usually it's the provider who set the price, not the school. If transport is covered by fundraising then the only cost parents should have is the cost of the residential centre and the school can't alter that.

They could subsidise the visit using pupil premium or sports funding-both of which you'll be able to find in the school website because they have to publish how they're spending the money.

Wow. My eldest is in year 5 so haven't had a residential yet. I think £300 is such a lot, so unaffordable for so many people, and for only 2 nights??! I don't doubt that this is indeed covering the cost of whatever they're doing, with no profit being made, but it doesn't make it any more reasonable.

I guess I would be having a hard time deciding if it was my child, and it would depend how desperate the child is to go. They won't want to be in the group that doesn't go on the residential, but at the same time there inevitably will be kids who's parents just can't afford it.

I remember when I was in year 6 (a reeeally long time ago!), my residential cost £40 (!) which was difficult for my single mum at the time. But we had a while to save up and this involved me contributing as well, pocket money etc. So if your DC really wants to go maybe they could contribute in some way?

My DC’s 4 night residential year 6 trip was £400 and that was 13 years ago.

Ours is £500 and I've got twins it's for a Monday-Friday trip in wales but the Monday and Friday will be spent travelling . I don't mind the cost so much as it's not till may And there's a payment plan . We were only given 2 weeks to pay the deposit though which was a bit of a pain we live in a poor area in the north but apparently they had a better percentage of students going than previous years

We’ve a two night trip coming up: £180
The previous five day trip was close to £500

Eldest child has two trips coming up next year: £450 and almost £500 respectively. Both are three days each.
Ridiculous

My DC had Y6 residentials which cost about £300 in 2013.

DD’s A level history trip was £1800 🫣

I didn't say they did get paid extra.

I am not worried about school making a profit no.
Slightly worried the activity centre is taking advantage (knowing of the other one we go to with the charity for a fraction of that).
But really I'm just wondering if they should simple do something else this year.
The cost is the same as last year pretty much. But at that point I wasn't involved in it of course.
I have 3 other children, younger ones, so what ever i do now I will have to follow through with.

Is it PGL? I find them prohibitively expensive. My trip in July is about £450, France, all activities, hotel, food, travel, plus £10 float which will be spent on getting the kids water/ice cream/bakery items.

Cover=£180 per teacher per day. I’m taking 4 teachers, 3 school days, one weekend, so £2160 before we even ask for the actual trip money, plus a percentage to ParentPay.