AIBU to say no to a Skiing Trip with the school?

[Lollylucyclark101]

So when my son was 12, he was invited to go on a Skiing trip with his school. The total cost was £3000… this didn’t include spending money or equipment hire; and extras we needed to buy before going. Me and my husband (not my sons father) said no; as we couldn’t afford it. My sons now 18, and no it’s never effected his life.

my stepdaughter is now 12 and now has had the same letter from her school. £3500. Automatically I’ve said no, as we can’t afford (£1500 odd quid) it.

Shes shown no interest in Skiing ever and why should the children be treated differently?

anyway, know this is going to be a huge row. Husband is saying “maybe, we will see” which to me is giving her false hope, when he should be saying no, regardless of if she gets upset. Because he KNOWS we can’t afford it.

there loads of other cheaper trips she can go on…. Germany, Milan etc, but the skiing trip is just out of our budget.

i don’t think schools should be allowed to do these expensive trips either! Only the rich kids get to go 🙄

anyway….. am I being the AH here?

Really?? I'm not a teacher but in what way is supervising a load of kids, dealing with travel sickness, homesickness, squabbles (probably exacerbated as the kids are spending way more time together than usual) etc etc 24 hours a day for (as I understand it) no extra money, particularly if it's a full week so losing their weekend in any way a 'high end freebie'?

You couldn't pay me to do that, sounds like hell!

Edit - sorry, see you've clarified what you meant while I was writing (it wasn't exactly clear though!)

why not?

If parents want to send their child, they do,
If not, they just don't sign them in.

What's the problem?

If you'd said, 'I don't think they are a good idea as it's not fair on those who can't afford it' that's one thing. That's a reasonable point.

Saying it's an unnecessary piss take' which is designed to get teachers a high end freebie at others' expense is completely different! That is not a reasonable point!

I can absolutely see the value of offering dc experiences outside of their norm, but there should be more thought put into inclusion. I’m sure the schools can justify the educational merit if the trip for those who can attend. But how do they justify the merits of the trip for those who cannot attend but are certainly learning lessons from that experience too? They have a duty of care to all their students,

By way of contrast, in ds’ school, they organise one Big Trip in TY and the school policy is that they bring everyone. They look at supports for the SN dc. All costs are transparent and kept as reasonable as possible. They run an annual event for the school families to fundraise to help keep costs down and help anyone who might be struggling. The kids are also encouraged to earn and save at least some of the money they will need themselves so that there’s a level of commitment from the start. Which helps with the behaviour management side of things too. The students have to organise some of the logistics themselves. It’s not skiing obviously. But it’s not just about the event, but the build up, the team work, the kindness and support they have to show each other. It’s a private school, and they’re aware that while many families can afford expensive skiing holidays, there are other experiences that growing up with money can miss.

They are married! Their money and assets are joint. Of course she can say no.

I get the idea, and nothing wrong with that, but knowing it's a private school - completely out of reach for most family, calling anything "inclusive" doesn't sound quite right.

nothing against private schools, but they are what they are, not designed to be inclusive, and why should they. Not everything has to be "inclusive", it ends up penalising everyone anyway.

I don't think school ski trips shouldn't happen because some children's parents can't afford it. I just question what on earth that amount of money is going on. I know that everything has gone up hugely since the 90s, but I also did an online search and found out that the £320 my mum paid when I was at school is about £960 now. Insurance has leapt up of course, and they probably need to cover more members of staff because of ratios, but £3500?!

YABU for saying that the school should not organise trips for other children just because you cannot afford it for your own child, even though you're happy to pay for Milan, when there will undoubtedly be children whose parents cannot afford that either.

Double standards

How much would you be willing to pay to take 60 kids abroad?

Ask your husband what's changed in your joint finances since you told your son no when it was his ski trip.
Has your husband had a secret raise? Won the lottery? How will he be paying?

He needs to let her mum know that unfortunately he isn't in a position to contribute.

At my school, if it’s a genuine learning opportunity as part of the curriculum, all students have to be given the opportunity to attend regardless of cost or behaviour. But these ones that are more of a holiday are all done in the same week and have different opportunities based on budgets. So there will be a trip to France, London and a theme park or shopping centre/cinema that can be chosen from. Any who stay behind in school will still have fun activities. Our ski trip is done over half term earlier in the year.

Well quite. I cant imagine people in any other profession being told they need to pay to go on a work trip.

Bonkers

DD went skiing in Italy in feb this year. £1500 , hotel,flights, AI food , ski lessons and equipment hire all included.

If you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. Unless your husband has a secret savings stash that he’s keeping hidden from you, in which case you have much bigger problems.

I would tell him is shes that keen to ski that money would pay for all of you to go and so your son doesn’t miss out!

So far on this thread we have learned that

Schools shouldn't be offering ski trips at all, because they are elitist and not educational enough. But also Schools absolutely should be offering ski trips, these experiences are really important for children.

Schools should make ski trips more affordable for low income families by charging wealthy parents more. But also if they do this they are being unethical and discriminating against wealthier parents.

Schools should be subsidising ski trips out of their budgets to make it accessible to all children, but also they would be massively unreasonable for doing so because why should your hard earned taxes pay for teachers to go skiing? Grabby, freeloading teachers should pay for themselves! Giving up their half term or weekend to supervise kids 24/7 is not enough of a sacrifice apparently.

And we wonder why it's getting harder and harder to persuade staff to give up their time to organise and lead school trips.

I find it incredible that people are quoting costs of around 1500 as more reasonable or affordable. Thats many family's whole holiday budget for the year, for them all to go away.

Schools shouldnt be allowed to run things like this, it should be something very small, UK based, with activities for a couple of hundred pounds.

When our eldest reached the school ski trip age he went and hated it! He could already ski as we went skiing as a family every year so did not like the fact that they were just in a beginners ski school which just taught him what he already knew despite the fact that I had informed the organiser that he was a fairly competent skier and being assured that he would be in an appropriate group. But what he hated was the place they stayed as the school had booked rooms but presumably to keep costs down they had extra beds in each room so a twin room with 3 or 4 extra beds so 5 or 6 to each room. The food was also dire chips with everything and chicken nuggets, pizza, hotdog type food for their main evening meal. His verdict was it was the worst holiday he had ever been on and he spent days telling the younger two never to sign up for it when it was their turn.

Schools shouldnt be allowed to run things like this

Yet lots of parents welcome this type of trip as being a way for their child to access a holiday that they can't afford or it's impractical for the whole family to go on.

it should be something very small, UK based, with activities for a couple of hundred pounds.

You wont get anything for £200. My DC's y6 residential was £365 for 3 nights away over ten years ago.

It would’ve cost a lot more for us to go as a family, plus I would’ve hated it and OH, despite loving skiing, would’ve been too worried about getting hurt and having to take time off (self employed, very physical job) to actually do it. Going with the school was the only was for DD to actually do it as a child, so it was well worth it in our eyes. In fact, we put her name down for everything and anything (whether she gets picked is down to luck) as we feel it’s incredibly important for her cultural capital. A lot of the trips are known about since they start y7 so we started saving well before she got chosen to go. There’s a NY one in y10 so I’ve already started a pot for that one. If she gets picked, we’re prepared, if she doesn’t it’ll be an extra/better holiday for us as a family.

Sure. But £100 times 30 kids is £3000 so that’s pretty good!

Coach costs, fuel costs mostly. A battlefields trip used to be about £450 for 3 nights. Now it's at least £750, if not more. Only the travel company males a bit of a profit, certainly the school doesn't. I have organised some v v small trips for less than ten students using booking .com etc but it's a massive headache and far less protected if anything goes wrong. You cannot do a ski trip or bigger residential independently..the logistics and insurance and linking it all up is just too big a job which all had to be done by a teacher on a full timetable with all their other demands on top.

what you mean is that school should only be running things YOU can afford?

You do realise that for people relying on food bank, a couple of hundred pounds for 1 child is not reasonable or affordable 🙄

Of course schools should be running these holidays. Better this, which are completely optional, where no one bats an eyelid if you don't go, than the more or less mandatory residentials or trips where you really stand out if you decline.

School trips are brilliant for children.

How funny. Guess it really really depends on who they go with. My kid went and loved it. He could ski and they had to indicate levels before they went. There was then a little ‘test’ to put them into the right group when they go there so I’m he was in the right level. His hotel was spacious and he said the food was really good. They went bowling, to a local mall, leisure center etc and he had an amazing time. He then went again until he wasn’t able to due to the risk of injury (he plays elite sport).

The other parents are not subsiding the places for low-income families- that would be illegal. In cases where schools subsidise places on school visits, it will come from Pupil Premium funding. There are rules about how PP funding can be used, and there are also stringent rules around qualification for PP.

I wonder why more people are not signing up for these ‘high end freebies’? You’d think people would be queuing up to work unpaid for a week, being on call 24/7 for the entire week, and being responsible for safeguarding dozens of children doing a high-risk sport which carries the risk of death or serious injury. Don’t forget the additional ginormous piss-take of working 19 days without a day off because you’re working full time before and after the trip, though to be fair only 9 of those days are 24 hour on-call.

Oh, and don’t forget all those piss- taking hours and hours of working unpaid in the months beforehand of getting the required organiser qualifications and actually setting up the trip…