To be fed up with the cost of school trips?

[0TiredMumOf4]

Hi all,
Just having a bit of a rant because I feel like I’m being totally swamped by the cost of all these school trips recently. DD1’s school trip to the Science Museum in London is coming up, and it’s a whopping £45. That’s for one trip! And to make matters worse, I’ve already shelled out for DS’s farm trip (another £35), and DD2’s little museum trip just up the road (which, okay, is £15, but still) 🙄.

I get that these trips are important, but seriously? £45 for a museum trip? That’s not even factoring in the cost of packed lunches and the inevitable begging for snacks to take on the coach. And they expect me to fork out this kind of money for all three of them every time there’s a school trip?? 🤦‍♀️

It’s not like I’m made of money, and it feels like they have a trip every other week. Am I being unreasonable to feel totally fed up with how much these things are costing? I don’t mind supporting the kids, but I can’t keep up with this!

Anyone else feel the same, or am I just being a tight arse? 😤

I do get it, and I know the coaches are a big part of the cost, but £45 still feels way too much for a day trip, especially when it’s just the transport. I guess there’s no way around it, but it’s frustrating when you’ve got more than one child, and the costs just pile up. I can’t imagine the stress of trying to sort all this out for a whole class, though. I suppose we’re lucky they even get trips, but I just wish they could be more affordable! And yeah, I know I’ve got four kids, but it still doesn’t make it any easier to keep up with it all.

Is this a serious suggestion??

I’m in London so most trips my kids have been on have been by public transport so very low cost. Even year 4/5 residential were accessible by London bus so minimal cost. They are both doing residentials by coach this summer though, which are around £275 for 2 nights UK/£500 for 3 nights in France.

Not true

The school is not allowed to make a profit from a school trip and they can only ask for a voluntary contribution. I have never worked in a school where the contribution asked for has been over inflated so those parents who pay cover the costs of those who don’t pay, this would be extremely unfair on those parents who pay.

if your child receives free school meals and thereby the school gets additional pupil premium funding, this can be used to pay for the trip.

it is generally the coach travel that makes the trip expense.

There are parts of the museum that you need to pay to enter so it’s not completely free. If they are going to the wonderlab that’s around £15.

It is expensive though, my DC recently went on a similar trip (1.5 hours each way by coach) and that was £30 which I thought was ok. It adds up though when it’s 3 trips each year.

You've got 4 kids so of course it’s going to be expensive.

Just be glad that the school is doing trips. I remember it was hard for my parents to afford these things too, but it did mean alot to go on these things. Surely you knew having 3 kids was going to add up!

Yes I am not sure how any of this is a surprise to you, of course they cost

I feel really sorry for schools. It doesn't sound like the trips are excessively expensive or even massively frequent, it's just that you have four kids so everything is multiplied by four and feels like a lot. This isn't really school's problem though and most families will have significantly less kids so will find it all more affordable. I absolutely don't think children should be offered less opportunities to go on trips or only be offered crappy cheap trips because you've overstretched yourself having 4 kids.

I often see threads of MN where people are contemplating another child that they really can't afford and they are encouraged to throw caution to the wind and go ahead. I think these posters should be shown this thread and see the reality that even something as simple as a school trip can become unaffordable and a stretch when you have more kids than money.

Say no then. No trips for your kids

My friend's kid is off to New York on a school trip.. that's crazy tbh. Like 2000£ how many can pay that?

Not true. Schools can't do this. If you honestly believe it is true at your school ask for costs for the trip.
And school buying a coach as another poster suggested? Seriously? Have you any idea what that would involve?
OP, you have four children so it's going to be expensive. What did you expect?
Genuine suggestion- put some money aside each month into a separate account for school trips and school uniform. I did that from when the older of my two children was in year 3. And yes, I was on a budget and money was tight for a long time but it meant we had the funds for these things. DD2 is on a residential this year and savings from my trip fund are paying for it.

In the museums of South Ken all this is free.

Our school makes us include the cost of staff cover for our trips. So if I'm taking 45 kids I would need 3 staff (1:15 ratio ) so that would be a couple of hundred pounds added to the cost. They also add an admin fee for the online payment system. I always have to top up out of my department budget due to having priced up the trip based on all students attending and then when 8 don't come I can't later put up the advertised price. It's really challenging organising trips.

It costs around £300,000 to buy a coach. Around £2.5-£3,000 to qualify as a coach driver.
You then have insurance, this is very costly as it covers the coach, all the passengers and then the general public.
Maintenanace is expensive, tyres start at around £550 each without fitting, a quick google tells me the average coach maintenance cost is £8,000 per year.
Coaches are not good on fuel, 6-8mpg isn’t unusual.
Where would you store your coach?

That’s a rip off. My kids get the train on their school trips and I’m not charged for trips like the science museum or most recently, a visit to the Docklands.

As previously stated, it’s the coach costs. They’re prohibitive. I’d love to take ours to London more (we’re only 45 minutes away by train) but we only take 6th Formers now (smaller group, can easily manage on train). Lower School I’d be charging £50+ for £10 theatre tickets and the school would not make any money from that. It’s limited opportunities as I won’t run trips like that.
I recently received a quotation for 2 days in Stratford upon Avon with a workshop, lecture, theatre performance at RSC. It would have been more expensive than the trip that’s just gone to Italy for a week!

I run school trips.
coach costs have doubled, sometimes trebled in the last decade. It also depends how far you’re travelling.

Free entry places like museum’s will charge schools workshop sessions- my yearly visit is £220 for a group of 30, so these costs add up.

Most schools are cashless now, so trip leaders pay for these trips via invoice and BACS payments. It’s all under heavy scrutiny by our school manager who is himself heavily scrutinised by our Education Authority. We don’t make any money from our trips - it’s unfortunately the cost of things now. We subsidise when we can but that’s becoming increasingly difficult too.

It must be hard with four children. I only have two and could not believe how expensive they got to the end of the teen years and when they applied for University.

If you cannot afford it, then keep them home and plan something lovely and local yourself.

I would say though, if you can’t afford it, please let them go guilt-free. Do not complain about the money too much to them. I felt a bit sad when you said about the ‘inevitable begging for snacks’. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for most parents to supply a packed lunch and some snacks. Try not to be hostile or begrudging if they go on the trip. Put on a smile and tell them to enjoy themselves. Otherwise it will spoil it.

I speak from experience as a child growing up with parents who were not enthusiastic and seemed to begrudge everything that was nice.

I would hate to take kids out on a school trip as a teacher. So stressful and exhausting. I appreciate all the teachers who manage to do this and stay sane! And as for residentials 🤯

At the school I work at all school trips, aside residentials, are subsidised to a voluntary cost of £7 per child, some pay more, some pay less or nothing at all, it’s at huge cost to the school though and I don’t think parents realise how lucky they are.

My own kids’ school trips cost a fortune because of the cost of the coach.

To put coach costs in perspective, I'm a brownie leader and to organise our coach from zone 2 London to our nearest big girlguiding activity centre (25miles ish) was £800 a couple of years ago. Probably more now. And that included a discount as we are a charity. You haven't replied to the messages asking how far away you are from the Science Museum but I could easily see transport costs being at least 50% of what you are being charged. I also agree with pp that the workshops are often chargeable for groups so that could be another £5-10 per child. You can see how it all starts to add up.

Don’t want to sound insensitive because I don’t know your circumstances but 4 children is a massive financial undertaking. I think a lot of people are stopping at 2 nowadays when they might have liked 3 or more purely because of the state of the economy and cost of living.

Im fully in support of you building whatever family you want but ultimately yes it’s crazy expensive and we are all in the same boat. We have a 5&3 yo at school/nursery and it feels like at least twice a week both are asking for either donations or requesting £1-£5 be sent in for different things. I’ve actually now built £50 a month into our budget simply for money we are giving to the schools and that’s without trips. Although we did pay £100 for a trip for DS just before Christmas. I don’t begrudge it because I sort of expected this would be the case but it is a lot.

You can’t complain about costs if you have chosen to have 4 kids!! That’s why most of us stopped at one or two. It gets pricier. That’s how much these things cost now. Are you implying the school are on the take?!

@TomatoSandwiches have to say when I was family planning I didn’t base whether I had a child or not on the cost of school trips. I didn’t ring round schools to work out a budget if I could afford that extra child to go camping 8 years in the future 😂 MN is ridiculous at times.

FWIW I had twins - I’m still allowed to have an opinion on/complain about the cost of trips when different schools manage to keep costs low and others don’t seem to care

no one seems to really know why schools need to do a residential skiing trip in Italy for 10 year olds or what life skills going camping in wales overnight is going to give in 2025