Lack of school residential trips...

[StrongerThongs]

Full prepared to be told IABU because Covid, teacher stress, cost of living crisis etc BUT I have a DD in Y9 who has never been on a residential school trip, either in the UK or overseas. Her primary school were unable to offer a Y6 trip due to Covid.

Pre-covid the secondary school she is now at offered several opportunities a year but this has been reduced to one massively oversubscribed and prohibitively expensive ski trip every two years (the last one was to Colorado!) and a couple of subject-specific trips for KS4 (eg. languages trips, geography field trips).

Instead school have decided to run an activities week in the summer term for all pupils which includes a bunch of paid days out (eg theatre trips, museums, escape rooms) or the opportunity to stay in school for free activities (sports). This seems like a bit of a crap alternative and frankly a waste of a week's education!

I get that school trips take a lot of planning and I am NOT knocking teachers but I believe they offer really important opportunities for developing confidence, resilience, independence etc particularly for children who have missed so much due to Covid.

FWIW this is a successful oversubscribed state school. At my own bog-standard comprehensive I was able to go skiing in Italy, canoeing in France, fell-walking in the Lakes as well as field/language trips and I'm not from a wealthy background - trips were affordable/subsidised. Obviously times have changed.

Interested to know what other schools offer? And if IABU for thinking DD's school could do better?

I find it shocking really that teachers and support staff aren't paid properly for these trips seeing as some people see them as essential. (Especially TAs who earn a pittance!)

As has been pointed out, there are other options if schools are unable to do trips...

Cadets when older
Scouting/Guiding from early Primary age
Residential camps
Church organisations

Volunteers/paid staff who are dedicated to this sort of thing.

I agree with you OP.

This year, my daughter's school offers residential trips to Portugal, New York, Dorset and a ski trip to Austria. Residential trips are the best part of school 👍

I feel like people's expectations of schools and teachers are way too high that this is even a question.

I find it shocking really that teachers and support staff aren't paid properly for these trips seeing as some people see them as essential. (Especially TAs who earn a pittance!)

Aren't paid properly? We aren't paid to do them AT ALL! Plus many extra hours before the trip planning it. It's unreal.

Does it not occur to you that the very act of asking parents about a trip will put some of them in a very difficult position? We've consciously decided to pull back on what we ask for for exactly this reason.
You're lucky that you presumably don't have to worry about that.

No. I read the ops question and then answered with “I agree op”. Some of the responses with swearing have been slightly aggressive…

Today I was asked to run a trip abroad by some students. I (kindly) explained that it would have to be in the holidays, therefore unpaid for me, I'd have to organise childcare ( pay), persuade 2 or more colleagues to do the same. Funnily enough they could see why it wasn't something I was jumping at the chance to do.

And yet every teacher on here has said the same thing.

It’s not ‘horrible’, it’s the truth. That’s why there are no trips.

@Retreat You've called teachers lazy for not wanting up to a week of unpaid over time plus the hours of admin and then complete responsibility while on the trip.

What's your job? I look forward to telling you my unreasonable expectations, and when you don't meet them, calling you lazy.

I don't think that's the case at all. Pre-covid a lot of schools offered a lot of trips. I was interested to know if the scaling back is universal, which from the responses on this thread, it would appear that it is.

Ii is possible to totally understand the reasons there are fewer trips these days AND feel sad that DCs won't have the opportunity to create the same memories of school trips that previous cohorts had.

I think there's way too much emphasis put on "making memories" these days, to be frank.

Really?! That's sad.

Because you’re talking out of your arse

Sad why?
For a start, it's not a school's job to facilitate the making of memories.
I have great memories from childhood, but no one curated them for me. There's too much pressure on everything these days.

I’m a teacher and happily run school trips as I know how enjoyable they are and how important for creating memories. My dd school has done nothing. Hence why I can say it’s laziness. No one can be bothered anymore. Such a shame.

Pre-covid a lot of schools offered a lot of trips.

The decline started pre covid.

But why is it our job to "create memories"? My job is is get my students good GCSEs and A Levels.

Sounds like it's the phrase 'making memories' that you object too. Would you prefer 'having positive experiences'?

Or do you just think life is shit and the sooner young people realise it, the better?

Nope.
I just don't think it's my job to do those things. If I think a trip has curricular value, I will organise it. But a ski trip/shopping centre visit/theme park visit... I don't see the point and I'm not prepared to spend precious time on it.

Where to and with which companies ?

I think expectations have been far too high for a long time. If you're lucky enough to get a group of teachers who want to do it, that's lovely and a great bonus. If not, then you will have a different experience in school holidays.

Kids not all getting the same...well, yes. A lot of life is the luck of the draw. My sister is four years older, we had a very different experience at the same school. Such is life.

I’m a teacher and happily run school trips as I know how enjoyable they are and how important for creating memories. My dd school has done nothing. Hence why I can say it’s laziness. No one can be bothered anymore. Such a shame

How many students? Where to? Were you the trip organiser and leader?

@Retreat if you are really a teacher running lots of trips then you are either single and childfree or have a spouse who picks up the slack when you're away, work in a flying golden unicorn of a school with a healthy budget, trip admin person and wealthy parents and have no interest in any kind of life outside of your job. If so, 👍👍👍 for you and polish your halo. But most of us are maxed out in every sense and when we do try to run trips, they come to nothing due to lack of uptake.

Teachers were told repeatedly on here during lockdown that if they didn’t like how things were in teaching, to just leave and…unsurprisingly, many of them did.

Those of us that are left are stretched very thinly trying to rewrite curriculums for Deep Dives, cover absences, support ECTs who are on the verge of resigning, pick up the pieces with families who can’t access GPs/CAMHS/SaLT/Family Support/Autism assessments, as well as do our actual jobs. Meanwhile, the media and the government are far too busy describing us as lazy leftie part time strikers who haven’t worked for two years, rather than bothering to address any of the actual issues in the profession. The teachers that are left are desperately trying focusing on teaching the curriculum.

The previous poster who describes a lack of residential trips as ‘laziness’ and that schools just ‘need to do better’, should stop and actually think about what they are saying.

Why would anyone want to do hours and hours of high-risk, sleepless and thankless unpaid work in their holidays?

Yep, lazy teachers not working for free.