Expensive school trip - why do schools do it?!

[Beach1983]

Cut a long story short, letter has come home with school trip for 8 days that is approx £2500 that doesn’t include food/spending money so guessing £500 extra for that, so all in roughly 3k.

Am I wildly out of touch for thinking that £3000 for a school trip for one child is ridiculous? (This is regular state school not private btw).

I feel annoyed with the school for putting parents in this position as obviously the kids want to go and (they say) all their friends are going so parents feel hugely guilt tripped into these things even if financially it’s a struggle!

Just needed to vent really and see if people share my views!

8days in New York isn’t cheap. Have you priced up flights 8days hotel and every activity your child will be doing? Plus insurance. Plus a chaperone. Plus transfers to and from the airport. It all adds up. Plus those teachers going are saints - I couldn’t think of anything worse than spending my holidays with 30 teenagers and being responsible for their safety and well-being in an unknown city 24/7.

I think these kind of trips are amazing opportunities for kids. Personally if my child wanted to go and I could afford it I would allow them. Yes it’s a lot of money but the experience for them will be invaluable and no matter what you say it just won’t be the same going as a family.

YANBU for saying it’s too much for you to be able to afford. That applies to anything in life!
YABU for not allowing them to go simply because you think they’ve priced it too high and you could get better value for money. Look at the experience value not just hotel is X flight is Y.

It's definitely not

i am going off topic, but…Nerdy kids and cool kids? Nice to know that these stereotypes are still alive and kicking. To add to the stereotype I would say that at my school most of the cool kids ended up in jail or in dead end jobs while many of the nerds blossomed and went on to carve out successful careers.

@Ramalangadingdong - ditto. At my school, nerdy would have been MC and cool WC. Someone sounds bitter that they didn’t get to go on the ‘fancy pants’ trips to me.

I know, same here and our school is in a deprived area! We just laugh when we see these letters and say, it's only £x!!!

I didn't say it was the teachers fault or schools could do anything about it. I was just pointing out that the companies that "give" free teacher places are covering those costs through the cost to child, correcting the quoted post.
As you can see from my other comments I am fully supportof school trips and feel the ones our school offer are good value.

My point is that teens want to go where their mates are. They would rather be in a cheap location with their friends than somewhere fancy with adults / kids they are not friends with. so if their friends aren’t going on the trip to Peru they won’t care if they aren’t going either.

To reframe the pupils that went on the trip were the more studious children who like the company of adults and were also annoying and not particularly kind or fun.

There's lots of holidays in the travel brochures that I can't afford. My kids tell me their friends are going on some of these types of holidays and why can't we? Because I choose not to go into debt that's why. The school are offering a trip. It's not compulsory. Life's not fair. That is part of education. So long as school are offering a range of trips at different price points I think it's fine.

And what is the problem with that? I first flew abroad in my 20s and my dd has not been abroad yet. I do feel there is an expectation these days for kids to have everything given to them and they are bombarded with materialistic social media. It is more beneficial, I think, to have a realistic conversation about the cost of things and how they can budget to go themselves when older and earning, rather than putting huge pressure on family finances.

Trips like this are not going to be any help to those families. A three night trip to a European city might.

And how do we know the school are not offering a 3 day European trip as well? Many schools offer a range of different trips.

Have you any idea how much food costs in NY? We've just come back and it is EXTORTIONATE.

Read the post, that is for food and spending money.

I didn't say they weren't. Just that trips like in the OP are not going to benefit any family that couldn't afford to go abroad at all.

My child is in secondary and hasn’t been on a trip in 3 years since starting secondary school. There have been trips arranged but all been in the thousands. The cheapest being £3200! It’s the same children going on these trips whose parents can afford it. There has never been any cheaper trips arranged not even a day at the theme park.

Haven’t been impressed that they don’t do trips to include everyone and do think it’s massively unfair that the kids who can’t afford it have to watch the same children go trip after trip and then hear about it and see the hundreds of photos on their return.

Ah....fundraising!
It's a bug bear of mine.
We have a local kids sports club, constantly (3 trips per year) fundraising to send their teams to the "world championships" or similar (not really a WC, not organised by a world governing body, just an international competition for anyone who wants to enter). Fundraising consists of begging and selling tat made by the kids. Basically the local community are subsidising these trips for a select few and their parents.

Then you have the other trips (scouts or volunteering overseas) where fundraising is supposed to be an integral part of the experience but again, I no longer feel like I am funding someone doing essential work in a deprived country. I am funding a nice trip overseas....and my friends who's kids have done this feel the pressure to fundraise is huge! And takes over their lives....when actually they could probably pay a good chunk themselves at a push. Or end up paying themselves but still having to buy naturals, make stuff, stand in cold for endless weekends and then buy the stuff themselves.

If fundraising is the ONLY way someone can afford one of these trips that's understandable. But when kids from affluent families are fundraising from the local community on the pretence that they can't afford it. And less well off people are subsidising a trip so it can be claimed its not about affordability because they fundraiser...they are actually taking opportunities away from other less affluent people.

People miss out in things in life, that's life.

Most kids won't be going on that trip.

I went to a state school in a wealthy area, the trips were always beyond what I was permitted, never bothered me.

This is far more expensive than any trip offered at either or my DCs private schools. I think a trip to NY at this cost isn’t really value for money for the educational impact.

As a separate point, you can’t try and work out the costings - it will always be cheaper pp if you did it yourself - as school trips subsidise the many supervising teachers (and I’m pretty sure it’s not a “holiday” for them : would be incredibly hard work!)

This sort of thing is so divisive. Obviously there will be children whose parents just can’t afford it. And their children will resent the ones who can.

You need to explain to your child that you can get a holiday for the whole family with that, so they won't be going.

@Beach1983 i’m intrigued at what the educational aspect of the trip is? Of course it’s nice to visit NY but often trips are tied to a topic, language or sport?

If I was headteacher I would say that’s too much to ask for from parents (5k if you have twins)

Ours the same. There’s a group of very well off kids who go on all the expensive trips (probably those who could afford private school fees but want a state school on principle). My DD has close friends who go. Everyone else ignores the trips. I don’t think it matters if it’s really clear they are optional and nor required for learning. Thankfully there have been cheaper trips (£300 or so) which we can afford. Even that is a huge amount during a cost of living crisis though,

It is ludicrous but doesn’t seem to be a necessary part of the curriculum- very few will go.

I don’t begrudge the teachers going to a lot of time and effort (and giving up their own holidays) to do something fun with the kids whose families can afford it though

Quit while you’re ahead, Thea. No need to have a dig at studious kids - of which I was one and had to put up with enough of that while at school. At the comp I attended you’d get ribbed for wanting to learn - as though we didn’t go to school to learn but just to have fun. Anyway, I assume you are referring to specific kids and not generalising about all studious youngsters.

Not so much paranoid as wrong in the English State sector at the least. School financing laws prohibit the school from making any profit whatsoever or making additional charges to cover the staff, who are giving up their contracted time off to make them happen.

I'm going to put a slightly different spin on this. DH's parents were unspeakably tight. All three children grew up feeling very poor. DH remembers the trip letters and how much he wanted to go. He also remembers throwing them away before he got home and never ever asking his parents. It was the thing that silently really pissed him off.

This shaped what he wanted in life and what he wanted for his children. It instilled a work ethic for a better life with better things.

I had to put my foot down and limit school trips to one educational trip per year and one schmancy trip every other year. Despite that there were times he'd see a trip letter on the stand and sign it, only to be told "um thanks dad, but I don't want to go on that". As they got older school trips turned into sports tours for one and music tours for the other.