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'm a teacher and am currently on the way back from a trip.
It was to MUN with only 9 good students, so relatively easy.

However I have had to

Before
Make arrangements with the MUN organisers
Book and pay for the hotel
Communicate with parents and students about passports, visas, vaccinations and insurance
Communicate about transport
Arrange for my daughter to stay somewhere

While there
Make sure students are ready every time we leave
Check they are in bed at night
Monitor what they are doing during MUN
Support them with preparation in the afternoon
Track expenses in 3 different currencies
Supervise them while shopping in the evening
Keep hold of all passports and other documents

When we get home
Provide details of all spending

It's been a great week and the students and parents have been grateful.
However for someone to say I would be lazy to not have done this is insulting.

It's

Sorry I forgot

Give medicine to one student every night
Care for the student having a legitimate emotional crisis
Communicate with parents who waned to meet with their children while we were on the trip

Continue to deal with work emails while away

We used to take Y10 to Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Stopped it because when you’ve seen one naughty kid trying to fellaite a cock on a statue you’ve seen it all. Every time…,😣

**While there
Make sure students are ready every time we leave
Check they are in bed at night
Monitor what they are doing during MUN
Support them with preparation in the afternoon

Track expenses in 3 different currencies

Supervise them while shopping in the evening

Keep hold of all passports and other documents

When we get home

Provide details of all spending

I mean doesn’t that just sort of sound like a professional job?

Are you completely responsible for the needs of 40 kids 24 hours a day in your professional job ?

Our school does an activities week and I don't think the residential activities were running as so undersubscribed. Even 2 night trips locally now are incredibly expensive and with the CoL crisis I think families with multiple children especially can't justify several residential trips.

Could your child join Scouts? My son has been with scouting for years and been on loads of camps, this year there's a week long residential to an activity centre about 80 miles away which will cost me only very slightly more than the 2 night activity centre trip less than 10 miles away he went on last year with school, and with better accommodation!

No thank goodness.

And that in itself is enough to mean I’m in awe of teachers. All the other stuff about expenses tracking etc…. No need as to me that’s just a professional job

as an aside, it was 9 kids and wouldn’t have had “sole” responsibility

But you have to do exactly the same whether it’s 9 kids or 90, and if you are group leader you are responsible.

I was at a PC meeting last week and the school have stated that there aren't as many trips as parents simply can't afford them. Not only the cost of the trip, but for some families, it's the clothes/spending money etc. It's out of a lot of parents budgets.

A school trip a year away, allowing parents to save had to be cancelled due to only 6 kids signing up out of 30. 😪.

I earn a reasonable salary in compared to some, and luckily no longer have school age children, but we'd have to think very carefully about it because our finances would be stretched , and wouldn't have allowed anyone else to go away eg us as a family on a cheapie break.

As someone else said I was group leader so it was my responsibility.

I take you think that it is perfectly reasonable for me to be responsible (with one other person) for 9 students from 7:00 am Monday to 4:00 pm Saturday for no additional pay.

No not at all

my point was all the other tasks you listed. Which really are just part and parcel of a professional job in my opinion and experience

Which are done on top of everything else, in your own time for no additional pay

Yes. I have never been paid overtime in my professional role. The expectation has been you pull in the hours necessary 🤷‍♀️

but they are all IN ADDITION to a full time professional job, and not part of it

I don’t get it.

I am saying I’m in awe of teachers taking kids on residential

what I’m not in awe of is the listing of stuff like expenses tracking.

You’re coming across as a twat, stop it

Good heavens, coffee time for you! 😂

What's the longest stretch you've worked unpaid?
Have you done a week in one go?

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!
🤔
Not sure how what you said above equates to a waste of a weeks education. All the paid days out are in fact educational so not sure what you are actually wanting tbh.

Not. A. Chance

Maybe you could consider signing her up for Guides or Scouts? Most of the groups near us run residentials and trips

I am going to provide a record of what each student ate at each meal, as parents will get a personalised bill.

I am not an accountant.

That is not a major task, the constant supervision was the hardest part but it was one of the things I had to do.

As someone else said this was all on top of my normal professional duties.
I had to plan for my classes and reply to emails the whole time I was away.

I’m nearly 60 and as my parents had very little money never did any residential trips
My DC had one in primary school (outward bound centre) and one in high school (history battlefields)
As a lone parent I paid weekly instalments to afford it
I think with the current cost of living it’s quite sensible and sensitive to consider alternatives
Schools budgets are stretched beyond belief - one local to me is struggling with an increase from £5k to £24k a year energy bills and is cutting staffing across the board from admin to TAs as they cannot balance their budget any other way
I am sure we have all noticed huge increases in consumables - where I work our stationery budget has increased by 400% in 2 years - we have not had any increase in income in fact it has reduced

I think that the point is, that after you get back from a trip, the work isn’t over. You might have spent tens or hundreds of hours on the admin in advance, the hundreds of hours over the 24/7 periods of the trip, then return to spend many further hours on post-trip stuff. That could involve expenses stuff and collecting receipts and chasing receipts from other staff, filling in forms for accounts, dealing with lost property and contacting parents, dealing with complaints from parents or questions, filling in school paperwork reviewing the trip, writing up accounts of the visit for the school newsletter and so on.

People want trips for their kids. As they say, it’s something most kids Remmeber most about from school. But honestly, most parents either don’t have any idea of the hours of work invovled to make it happen because they haven’t thought about it/can’t comprehend the task invovled, or just as likely, feel trips are something schools should provide so doing the work to make them happen is part of the teachers job, regardless of the unpaid hours invovled.

Where do people draw the line in terms of how many hours they think teachers should work to provide the stuff they consider part of an ‘education’ for their children?

Trips have always been labour intensive, but over time have got moreso, with increased need for safeguarding, risk assessments and demands of parents. So it’s a bigger job now than ever. And that’s in the context of teachers being hugely stretched in their day-to-day work due to a lack of resources and staff, so they are less able than ever to go above and beyond, especially as the above and beyond needed is bigger than ever. And given the government resistance to improving resourcing, any goodwill remaining is rapidly drying up.

I guess parents simply think ‘my child would love a trip, like I did’ and don’t think about these kind of things that are stopping it happening.

Almsot all of the problems and reducing things in education are down to lack of resourcing. This lack of resourcing is impacting the day to day and year to year experience of children at school and it’s becoming increasingly visible to parents, after schools have worked hard for so long, to keep things going and not show the widening cracks. Parents start to see the reduction in trips, reduction in textbooks, fact their child doesn’t always have a qualified teacher in front of them …..it’s gradual but the trend is in the same direction. In winder when parents will start to get angry and tell the government that, or will they just blame schools?