Can't afford Dd's very expensive school trip

[Wario54]

My DD is 15 and in year 10 at the moment. We live a deprived part of the North of England. She goes to a local, state comprehensive

My DH has had his hours reduced at work in recent months. I work part time in retail (can't get anymore hours unfortunately - I have asked). Like a lot of families, we're financially struggling to keep our heads above water. But we get by (somehow) and I never take the little things for granted (that we have each other, food on the table and a roof over our heads). We've not told our kids about our financial worries - they know there isn't much spare money but not about the extent of our problems.

Dd has come home tonight with a letter and great excitement about another school trip. They had a guest speaker today (external travel company) in assembly today enthusing them about a trip to Borneo of all places. It's 4 weeks long and the cost is £6,500. Currently planned for June/July 2027 (just after her GCSE'S). They are expected to fundraise some of the cost themselves (bake sales, sponsored walks etc) but we will have to pay the majority if she's to go.

She said today that she'll get a Saturday job to cover some of the cost herself. But even with that, taken into account we just can't afford it. It breaks my heart, because I'd love to give her that opportunity but I know we simply can't.

She's full of excitement about trekking through the jungle and cuddling Orangutans. But how do I tell her when she's already set her heart on it? 😢

I just think the school are being completely ridiculous by offering such an expensive trip in a cost of living crisis.

Oh just realised this looks like yet another AI-generated OP doesn’t it?

People spend that much on a whole gap year. Tell her that and she can start saving for that. It’s shocking the school invited a travel company in selling such a rip off trip especially if you’re in a deprived area. I agree complain. I assume the school got a cash incentive for letting the travel company talk to the kids

Wondering as reading the other posts upthread if the school get some kind of commission?

I'm comfortable financially, but would never spend such an insane amount for my kid to go on a school trip!

This is a great way of looking at it. I think you should tell your daughter that this is a hard no, but use it as a springboard to start researching something exciting that she COULD do. If part of the appeal was an adventure with specific best friends (who will probably be equally unable to fund this and equally disappointed), could they all get together a few times over the Christmas holidays to start researching / planning alternative opportunities to travel, and grants that might be available to help them etc.

It doesn't have to feel like a door slamming shut. It could be the catalyst for something better.

No, they don't usually.

Idiotic amount on a trip. Is it even real?

Why do you say that? (I'm not very good at spotting them, but get really annoyed if I accidentally waste time engaging with them!)

I'm also living in a deprived part of the north and my eldest DD brought a letter home a couple of years ago for a skiing trip during Feb half term..5 days for £1800. She really wanted to go but I explained that's over 3 months rent. I don't know where schools think people find the money

Oh God, I bet it is. OP hasn't been back.

So not £85k then?

Sorry not RTFT but I am sure I am just repeating what others have said.

I fucking HATE these vile companies. They sell these trips as kids "helping poorer communities" (HA!) and make it all about the fundraising to give it the required middle class veneer of acceptability to cover the fact that it is just a fucking jolly that only the posh kids can afford.

"Fundraising" usually means tapping up the Grandparents etc which is enough to pass the "requirements".

The people who go into schools are nothing more than sales people. Like the timeshare sales people of old. They prey on the fact that young people are easily manipulated, excited and sold to. Its utterly disgusting and in my opinion should be illegal.

Anyone know if there is a campaign about this already going or can the might of the MN Nest of Vipers start one?

Hello, to put things into perspective, we are financially very stable but I would never ever pay that amount for a school trip!!! It’s ridiculous and I would not allow my child to go

We had this company come into my dd’s school, saying how last year the school raised 50k towards it making it sound like a huge amount. The amount of children going meant this only amounted to less than £2000 each still leaving thousands for each parent to pick up.

So so cruel to have them in pushing these trips as the majority just can’t do it.

This sort of thing really boils my piss, because they're trading on middle-class guilt and the compulsion to 'do good things'. There is nothing wrong with a teenager going on a wholly sybaritic trip for a lot less money, for heavens' sake! But dress it up as a voluntourism enterprise and everyone feels they have to.

This is slightly different, but - I live in an affluent rural area where there's a charity active. It sends groups of teens (and parents sometimes - if they can pay their way) to a sub-Saharan African country for a fortnight most years. They've sponsored a small community which has an orphanage and church centre that they 'help', and the teens who go out build, I kid you not, mud huts. It's so bloody patronising! Yes, the teenagers play with and work with the children there, I'm sure there's some reciprocal good feels - but do impoverished children in Africa really need privileged white kids from the UK coming out, playing footy with them for two weeks and then buggering back beyond the veil, leaving them with some used shoes and second-hand toys, and presumably a sense of bewilderment and resentfulness? It really is the definition of White Saviourdom.

I've tried, over the years, to chat about this with friends whose teenage children have gone out, having fundraised 1000's in order to do so. (and that's another matter - imagine a small village where maybe 10 teenagers are all trying to raise a lot of money, each, in order to fund their way. How many bake sales, car washes, fashion swaps, babysitting etc need to happen, within the same small village , in order to send them there?) Anyway, you get shot down in flames. Don't I know that it's a Really Good Thing they're doing? That it's life-changing for their teenage child to see how children who have nothing live (because obviously these orphans are basically props and learning opportunities)? That the shoes I'd throw away because I wouldn't wish them on anyone else after my child's worn them to death for a year should be put in a suitcase and taken out there 'because those kids have nothing, they'd be grateful for these'? You can talk until you're blue in the face about alternative charitable models, dependence, White Saviour charity, and the economics of carting unwanted tat halfway around the world by plane rather than buying things out there in the local economy. You will be branded heartless and cold.

All the teenagers get a cool-looking thing to put on their CVs and uni applications and they're mostly pretty open about that being why they do it.

This is absolutely outrageous ridiculous price for a school trip to Borneo !

Flights were the most expensive thing
Accommodation is much cheaper than UK for hotels (look up prices on Booking.com or Agoda)
Food is much much cheaper than UK
Fresh chilled coconut to drink 30 pence each
Borneo was a former British colony

I have been to Borneo on holiday, booked by myself (not a guided tour)
I have visited an orangutan sanctuary, where there were viewing platforms. There was definitely no contact with any orangutans.
Similarly, for the sun bears & long nosed monkeys.

It is extremely hot & humid

Does the school trip include a donation to a local school in Borneo or to an animal sanctuary ?

Why so expensive ???

They offered World Challenge at my generally wealthy school in the 90s. No one in my class went - only a small number across the whole school. It was very expensive. I actually ended up saving a similar amount of money in my gap year for a trip three times longer, which was brilliant.

I'd just say no, hope none of her friends go, and encourage her to research better priced options and start saving for when she's 18.

(I also did an Outward Bound type trip when I was 15 which was MUCH more affordable and brilliant fun, although less exotic destinations. More achievable for her to save up for. Maybe worth a look).

I think I’m starting to spot the style of the writing - the OPs seem to be a similar length, similar composition, certain turns of phrase and ending with a particular sort of question that opens up the discussion.

Quite comprehensive with detail - like a lot of time would have been invested writing it - but then the OP doesn’t return.

Certain turns of phrase (like the paragraph about it ‘breaking my heart).

It’s clearly based on a very real and plausible scenario that could easily be a real OP, but the writing says AI to me.

I agree, it would be over ten years ago now but a very similar scenario to what you're facing now @Wario54 . But my, the inflation - it was about £2k then. Tanzania, they were to aid in building a school (what, a bunch of untrained lads?) and some trips to see the wildlife. They were to fundraise it themselves (they couldn't/didn't, the parents shelled out), it was all run by an external company.

I would be absolutely FURIOUS with the school, and I would be telling them so. They OKed this company coming in, they provided the space for this company to make their sales pitch to impressionable teenagers, they gave this company's pitch the veneer of school approval.

It's shit that they dangle this unachievable carrot over children's heads, in fact it's just plain immoral. And it's been going on for years.

You're going to have to be a bit brutal with her here. £6,500. How is she going to raise that amount? Let's put it down on paper. How many Saturdays between then and now? How much would she have to earn each Saturday to reach that target? Is that feasible? How much does she think a bake sale would raise, considering the cost of ingredients etc? Who would sponsor her (and all the other kids at her school chasing the same sponsorship) for whatever sponsored event she dreams up? How much, realistically, would that raise? How many hours would you / your husband have to work to earn that much money? What else would that amount of money buy?

Sadly, she's going to have to grow up fast and appreciate that some things just cannot be afforded. And I'd be furious of the school deciding to hold that lesson with no prewarning to the parents. The school must bear the responsibility for disillusioning their pupils, at a stage where disillusionment can be really fucking hard on them. And I'd be telling the Head exactly that.

https://sabahtourism.com/destination/sepilok-orangutan-rehabilitation-centre/

I have visited here & other places in Borneo

It cost a lot less than 6K !

This trip is what the local school to us is offering too

sounds like that’s a bit of a racket! Wonder what Old Boys Network stitched that up.

I remember when a company like this came to my school. The trip was to Indonesia and the deal was the students were to raise the money (several thousands even bank then - I’m now in my 40s) and the parents “just” had to be guarantors. My mum and step dad wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of me going. They had little to no money, we lived in a council property, it just wasn’t going to happen. But my goodness I was DEVASTATED. I still remember how utterly heartbroken I was. As an adult I get it but as a teenager it was hard and terribly unfair.

Now I realise the only real unfair things was that company coming to the school in the first place when most of the school had no chance of being able to afford to go.

in the end a handful of my year group did go. But the destination was changed last minute due to military unrest in the original destination if I remember right.

im still a bit bitter 😂 but that has more to do with my parents than the trip itself.

Sit her down and explain your income and outgoings.

Ask her to come up with a fully costed plan of how she is going to pay for this herself (that is the idea). Do not for a minute believe it can be raised by bake sales or sponsorship in a deprived, or any, area.

My child did a similar trip to a different location but it was a third cheaper than this and they paid for it entirely out of their earnings bar a few hundred from family. It was an insane amount of work alongside GCSEs. 6.5k is total madness.

I suspect the conversation you need to have with your daughter will take place in many other homes of children in your daughter's year; the take up may be very low.