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!

My daughter year 7 trip was £2,300 for an 8 day ski trip - she did not go, nor did a lot of others as it was mixed year groups so from year 7 to 11 could apply. Whatever happened to a week in the Lake District 🤣

I don't know anyone who would pay £3k for a school trip. If I had £3k, I'd take my family to New York myself!

When are they going? Time of year/during half term will affect the prices too.

Oh god, or a week trudging up the North Sea coast in the rain looking for fossils and then being sent down pot holes, praying it wouldn't rain again while you were stuck underground.

Best days of our lives, according to our parents anyway.........

It’s basically an excuse for the teachers who go to have a jolly. It’s like when you go out for a meal in a group and you handle the money with everyone giving you £20 or whatever and you manage to cover your share with it too 😉

That’s insane. Years ago when I was at school I didn’t even ask my dps about the expensive skiing trip - I knew it wasn’t affordable. I’ve always assumed that our dc would be able to go on these trips when the time came (and been so grateful to be in that position) but £3k is ridiculous.

I am aghast - £3000! For one child? Who on earth thought that was a good idea?

It's over 10 years now since my DD was at school but, even allowing for the passage of time, none of the trips on offer came close to that,and she did a few good ones.

She got to go to the London Olympics, spent two nights and saw two events but even that was quite reasonable. Coach there, stayed in Halls of Residence and we had a year's notice so could pay in instalments.

One trip she didn't take. At the start of the GCSE course we were told for one of her subjects there would be a trip to Berlin. Forgot about it and it was never mentioned again. Much later when GCSEs were over I commented on this. She eventually admitted that it had happened but she never brought the letter home because the trip cost about £800 and DH was out of work at the time so she thought we might not have been able to afford it. Gutted! We had savings and I was still working FT so we would have managed somehow.

Remembering that I feel for families who have to deny their DC trips because of the expense. And £3000!!!

£3k for New York shocking my son went a few years ago for £995 did Empire State Building,broadway musical, statue liberty, ice skating in Central Park and the zoo,freedom tower and memorial and a full day at the malls etc that was food too they having you on OP

I think it's outrageously unfair - it makes me livid. I don't know how it's allowed or how anyone can afford it. It so not fair to make some kids think they can't afford what others have.

I once moaned because my son had a trip that cost £70 decades ago 3 days in a wood somewhere in essex.
But over the years ive heard of some trips costing ££££££££ schools are taking the piss.
My good friend's daughter had a trip to france costing £1800 per child without spending money.
She didnt go nore did others the school called it off in the end due to hardly any kids going.
But a few mums at the time said they must be paying for the teachers to go at that price.
It makes me think do teachers say its one price then put all the odds in a fund so they have a free trip at the parents cost.

But WTF is the point in a trip that only 20% of school children will be able to go on? Can any teachers come on and explain what it is I seem to be missing. Why are these pricey trips organised?

While I agree the sum is ridiculous, it's not unfair at all for kids to think that. Tbh, most kids that aren't wealthy are very aware of that fact. It's life. While disappointing, it's not a bad lesson/fact to learn , realise and accept either. Otherwise, that's how you end up with some people in debt and struggling because they're trying to keep up with others around them and have what everyone else has.

School trips should not be the way to teach that life lesson. And if the purpose of a 3k school trip is not to teach children they are poorer than others, then what is the purpose of a 3k school trip ? Genuine question.

Also the rather paternalist implication that the South Americans don't have builders.

Either the trip is educational, in which case every child should be able to afford it and there should be enough places for all to go, or it's a "jolly" that isn't educational, in which case the school shouldn't be running it at all. Schools are there to educate, not organise holidays.

The idea that children miss out on some of their education because their parents can't afford the cost of trip is antithetical to and incompatible with the concept of State-funded free-at-point-of-access education.

If so many teachers don't like these trips because they're done in their own time, the responsibility etc, why don't they individually, or collectively refuse to take part? Surely it isn't mandatory to go? So there must be something in it for them.

The kids that don't go on that trip won't learn that lesson, will they? People don't always stay rich who start rich.

This.

The PE dept ski trips to the Alps at my school were an excuse for the staff to get a free ski trip on snow.

Kids wanting to ski could go to the dry ski slope two miles from the school.

While I totally agree that the cost of some of these trips is crazy, there seems also to be a view among some parents that teachers are manipulating prices to get a free holiday paid for by parents.

This is rubbish. It is true that the parents' contributions are paying for the teachers' trips but that is because these are part of the cost of the event. If the teachers did not go there would be no trip, and they are working 24/7 the whole time they are there, making sure your kids are safe and having the time of their lives. This is not a freebie for the teachers.

I took 3 children on a 10 day trips to NY 6 years ago.

Flights and accommodation approx £2200

We did all the usual things, I think the total cost for everything including food was about £3200. For 4 of us, in August.

Your school has no idea how to budget OP!

Really? So the kids going on the trip got no more pleasure than they would have from the dry ski slope two miles away and then home for tea?

This has been explained SO many times.

How ignorant or lacking in imagination do you have to be to believe that being responsible for a crowd of teenagers 24/7 for a week is remotely like a jolly?

You can't send them home or to a higher authority if they misbehave, however dangerously or maliciously. You yourselves are foreigners in an unfamiliar place, whilst managing all this responsibility.

Have YOU ever volunteered to help with even a school day trip, using a day of annual leave? Most of these trips are in school holidays, so teachers are giving up their time to do something that's very hard work and potentially extremely stressful.

When I was a teacher on a school trip it was hard. Dealing with a collapsed child and getting urgent medical help when I was the only one able to speak the language, and that was only what I'd taught myself in the previous couple of months. Trying to keep girls safe when a bunch of drunk local men were leering and approaching. And so much more.

A friend of mine was leading a school trip in London on 7/7. One group of children were cut off on the other side of town and couldn't get back for ages. No mobile phones working, so no one knew if they were alive and safe.

Maybe just think it through before making more comments like that?

8 days is a long trip to New York- I would have though 6 maximum including travel each way.
£3000 is extortionate. They are available from specialist school tour companies starting around £900 but thats for 5 days.

I'm a language teacher and this year, for the first time, we have had to cancel trips because not enough teachers were willing to go. I think it's going to become more common in the future as teachers become more and more conscious of how many school activities are reliant on their goodwill. My school also expects teachers to share rooms on school trips to keep the costs to parents as low as possible, which naturally grown adults and professionals are not exactly keen to do.

About the cost - as someone who has organised lots of school trips over the years, you are always going to pay far more to send kids on a trip organised by a school rather than going by yourself. Schools will have to book through an agency, who add on a massive chunk for their own services and profit. You also have to pay for quite hefty group-trip insurance when travelling with so many school-aged pupils. The coach to and from the airport alone costs an eye-watering amount (and we are in London so it's not even that long a journey).

You are also obviously paying for the teachers flights and accommodation, along with the cost of cover teachers for the days that the teachers are missing school. Some schools will add on a daily rate for food etc for teachers (my school doesn't however, hence very few teachers are willing to go - I pushed for my school to add this, but they refused, which was another factor in having teachers refusing to take part). If the group are taking part in activities on location, they can cost a lot as well as companies seem to see school groups as cash cows, despite more often than not providing a sub-standard service.

That's not an amusing remark and it certainly isn't true. One of my friends was a teacher in a secondary school and died on a school trip when he jumped in the water to save a student messing about who had fallen off a raft in a river. Teachers literally take responsibility for the safety of a group of children 24 hours a day and are paid for 8 of those hours.

If you were being flippant, you were thoughtless and sound ignorant.