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!

And the costs will include insurance and the cost of providing cover for those staff going
(I take your NY trip and offer LA - DD's school trip this year - we went to Wales)

3k for New York? That is absolute daylight robbery. It’s not even that far. Very poor value.

You think £2500 is expensive, yet you think it’s normal to budget over £60 a day for pocket money whilst on it?! 😳
I’d have thought it was the parents who think £500 for a week’s spends who could afford the £2500!

At my childs school they do these ridiculously expensive trips it really infuriates me i absolutely do not understand why the need for them.
So many families must put themselves in such difficult financial positions to not let their kid down.
There are usually 3 in one year ,one of which is usa ,2 out of the 3 take place in term time which is a farce .
None of my mine have ever gone on the usa trip £3000 plus, no way can we justify spending this on just one member of our family of 5.

Gosh my daughters school is going NY and that is £1000 and I said too much!

Of course it will include the cost of the teacher. No member of staff is going to willingly pay to supervise students for 8 days.

DS's school raised the price of the annual ski trip to £1500 this year, and I notice that they're still trying to fill places.

The teachers won’t get paid additional money to do this but any additional costs charged by the travel company for them to go will be recharged to parents. Do you have a pay by instalments option OP?

Blimey. My niece is going to.rome with school for her history gcse. (Not sure why they need to) and i thought £750 was too much! I'm paying in instalments. She gets it a bit cheaper though as she gets FSM. Should be 1k

@Testina

read the post but to help you that doesn’t include food/spending money

so it’s not ‘spends’ it’s to cover food as well. Not only the 8 days but the journey there and back at the airport

@Testina I have no clue as I’ve never been to America, I used Google as my guide as to how much food and drink was in NY and average spend. Pls correct me if you know an accurate price for 8 days of food/drink/shopping?

I agree. Ridiculous.

Why can't they organise some local charity work for pupils? Soup kitchens, friendly visit to patients in the local hospital, old-age people's home, etc.

Would be a fantastic part of education.

I booked a trip to NY today for £771pp for 4 nights/5 days. Obviously no trips/excursions or travel to and from airports

My school (not in UK admittedly) had a budget of 350 euros (back around 2000) to make it accessible. Families unable to pay could apply to the school to fund it. IMHO school teios are meant to be educational not for leisure purposes. £2.5k is ridiculous. Two of us travelled Asia for 3 weeks for less than that.

Money aside, 8 days in NY!!! I thinknthats far too long to go you can do most things in a couple of days

Ive never heard of any state school doing a trip like this

The nearest to it that Ive actually heard of are:

• these project things where the kids are meant to fundraise to go on some tokenistically eco themed trip. Only a handful of pupils ever go.
• language exchanges eg trip to china, often through educational bureaus where accommodation is provided through things like school dorms or family/homestays and the cost is far lower than £3k.
• ski trips, again where relatively few pupils actually go. There are often only about 60 places to go around 500+ pupils.

I have no clue as I’ve never been to America

It's ridiculously expensive.

Pays for the teachers

. Obviously no trips/excursions or travel to and from airports

Taxi into town from airport to hotel can be between 50 - 100 dollars.

Well, yes. Teachers costs will be paid for by the pupils going. They’ll already be giving up 8 days, most likely with no time off in lieu (so at the very least 2 weekend days, up to 8 days if it’s in a school holiday). They’re on call 24/7 for those days. Should they also have to pay hundreds/thousands for this privilege?

I've never heard of a school trip that doesn't include food. I'd be amazed if that's the case. It's impossible to manage a group of children with different food budgets etc, as you need to have them all eating in the same place. Are you sure you have that right?

VenhamousSnake - lots of state schools offer these trips .
The usa trip at our state school is £2500 plus kit and food/spending money ,its obscene.
It would be so refreshing if they were scrapped completely and local charity / volunteering type things mentioned earlier were done instead .

Not directly relevant to the OP post but if a visit is more than 50% during the school day or is for a defined exam such as a GCSE field trip the school by law can only ask parents for a contribution but if not sufficient funds come in then the whole trip will have to be cancelled. If a parent can only contribute a small amount towards the total costs they cannot be penalised and their child withdrawn because of that.

You could definitely take 2 teens and an adult to NY for a week for 3K. Maybe not including every activity but it’s a city, there is so much free stuff. Flights, £1.2k at Easter 2023, Airbnb £1k for the week somewhere in east, short commuting distance. Plenty left over for food.

£3k for one person is ludicrous.

That is crazy… I just did a bit of googling and found that to go in spring half term it would cost around £1100 (sharing rooms by 2) for a week, including the trip pass. So what is the other £1400 for??? I appreciate that you’re paying for teachers, but let’s say there’s 5 teachers going with 20 kids (I’m not sure if those ratios are correct, I’m sure someone can come and correct me!) that would be £5500 divided by the 20 kids, is £275 each… so there’s still another £1125 out somewhere. I know there would be insurance but that wouldn’t cost that per child!

can you ask the school for more of a breakdown?