School threatens to not refund trip money

[bizzy1234]

My Dd has a very expensive year 11 trip to South Africa for a sports tour after her GCSEs.
Aside from being incredibly proud of herself to have been invited into the team she has never missed training or matches.
She has worked hard for about 18 months babysitting and washing cars to pay for half of it.
Unfortunately she has had 2 detention this year.. both minor offences such as using her phone in break.
She is a good kid and works hard.
The school have sent me a standard letter saying if she gets a third detention she will be disqualified from the sports trip and we will not be refunded.
Is this legal for them to a remove a child from a sports trip who apart from petty offences (she's had glowing reports).
NB it's a new deputy head who is handing out detentions like toffees!

This is pretty normal and I think it's generally an arse covering exercise for the school.

In reality they would most likely refund where possible i.e. if they are unable to fill the place/ haven't made non-refundable deposits. Which frankly seems fair enough and it was probably in the fine print when you paid.

I don't think making trips contingent on good behaviour is a bad thing at all and I think parents often have slightly rose tinted glasses about their kids "minor" misbehaviour.

I imagine trying to corral a team's worth of "minorly" misbehaved teenagers in a foreign country would be a fucking nightmare.

I’m glad I’m an adult and can make small mistakes now! I was so anxious as a kid about stuff like this, a dozy moment misreading a two-week timetable... late to a lesson and detention, or forgetting homework I’d genuinely cared about, a shirt hanging out after running for a bus etc. As an adult I can just fix and deal with minor stuff, I never learned to be perfect but it’s way easier as an adult. I’ll never forget getting a demotion for throwing a conker at someone, I genuinely didn’t and was standing there spaced out and missed who did. My refusal to name anyone was taken as guilt! I was just a daydreamer

The detentions aren't unreasonable. For a behaviour system to work it has to be applied to all students, even the good ones. A behaviour system that allows some students to break rules and not others is a poor system.

Making a trip dependent on good behaviour is also reasonable and fairly standard procedure.

Having a 3 detentions and you're off the trip rule stated after parents have signed up is very unreasonable.

Lola, I don't think it's the trip rule that changed, it's the rules about when detention is given, making 3 detentions much likelier to be triggered. I hope PPs are right and in practice discretion would be applied if the misbehaviours are not of a sort likely to disrupt a trip. Even so it's an added stress they don't need at GCSE time.

Thousands of perfectly ordinary children manage to abide by standard rules and get through a term without sanctions

Oh for goodness sake, don't be so sanctimonious. Different schools operate different policies DS has been caught with his phone when he should not have had it three times this school year. So he would have had three detentions at the OP's school. But at his school they don't issue a detention, they just take away the phone and a parent has to go in to collect it. The last time he was actually using it to research some homework so the commuted it to him being able to collect at the end of the school day rather than me. Hardly serious enough to take a load of money and stop a pupil going on a school trip.

I agree with the people who've said you can't change the terms after you've signed up - it's a contract and unilateral changes are not allowed. Straight forward consumer protection law and applies to schools - the definition of "trader" includes public bodies so they can't get out of it that way.

I don't think making trips contingent on good behaviour is a bad thing at all and I think parents often have slightly rose tinted glasses about their kids "minor" misbehaviour

Yes but this IS minor misbehaviour. You'd ban a child from a trip for hitting someone, not using a mobile phone (unless it was being used for bullying for example).

I understand why the want good behaviour before taking children on trips and I understand why detention might be given for forgotten homework and phones out.

However saying forgetting homework and phone out mean no trips and parents writing off money - well I don’t think that works.

At my kids secondary tehre a sliding scale of detentions - the minor one don't impact on trips and are for talking

As a pp said it would make me very worried about paying for any trips going forward and I have very well behaved kids.

Using her phone in school when she knows it’s breaking the rules is NOT a minor offence. It’s a defiant disregard for authority. If your daughter does goto South Africa she will have to show respect for their rules.
If she gets into trouble in South Africa it will be the teachers who pick up the pieces. So I’m not surprised that she will be excluded from the trip after a 3rd detention.

Thank you all for your comments.
DD is now totally immersed in revision and leaves her phone at home.
Interestingly when DD went to sit her detention at lunch break the room was so full that she was told to come for just 10 minutes as there weren’t enough desks. Apparently the staff find the quantity of detentions that are being handed out belittles the more serious detentions... I couldn’t agree more.

lisalocketlostherpocket
That's a classic 'but it's only... It was just...' argument.

If I'm taking a group of students on residential, I need to be confident they are students who will behave themselves and not decide some rules don't apply to them because they don't like them or they want to just do something else.

bigKiteFlying
I think the change in these detentions is the issue rather than scale.
If someone repeatedly ignores instructions and has lots of detentions all for minor things then that still bothers me as a teacher because they're likely to be a student who'll be a pain on the trip (e.g. we say meet back at 3pm but they'll turn up at quartet past because it's just 5 minutes and 5 mins turns into 15, we say stay in a set area and they 'just' go one street away, we say they need to have cameras away in an exhibition as that's the museum rules & they'll snap away because it's just a photo. None of them are terribly serious but it makes running a trip exhausting.