What I find surprising about this thread and Ops post, is how little people know about school trips and their financing and also that there is a suspicion that schools charge more than needed.
Trips abroad are very expensive. Schools use specialist providers who have to make a profit because otherwise the level of risk involved is such that most schools won’t accept trips without specialist providers, plus the level of organisation on top of the full time job would be prohibitive.
The costs are always more than you find on a website. Lots of people have mentioned the additional costs and contingencies which have to be factored in.
With curriculum trips schools might charge a bit more per head to cover those who won’t pay but need to go. Most or all of this usually has to be funded from the schools very tight budgets.
After a trip like this, the school won’t have retained money. If there is some it will be returned and mean contingency spending wasn’t needed, although it had to be budgeted for.
People have very little awareness of school budgets. Many people behave as if individual schools deliberately make requests for money to squeeze as much out of them as possible and for the school or sometimes even personal gain. There is a lack of appreciation at how far that is from the truth - that schools work really hard to keep requests for money down because they know it’s hard for some people. They are faced with asking for money or not offering the curriculum and non curriculum trips. It’s as simple as that really. School budgets have been cut and cut and there is nothing left for even basics, never mind trips and things which enrich. So if you want them, you have to pay up. It will mean some children access more trips than others but school funding cannot cover the gap.
On top of their many hours of work, teachers choose to also spend time working on organising trips and finding ways to keep costs down which takes hours. And then they go on the trips, bearing 24/7 pressure and responsibility. Why, because they believe the children gain from it.
What reaction do they get for this stuff which is beyond their job? A few thank yous at the end, possibly 1 person sending a box of chocs. Also, umpteen complaints, failure to return forms during the planning stage...parents complaining about rooming, wNting different arrangements, contact and complaints during the trip, people being over an hour late to collect their kids after the trip returns and then pulling up and not even winding down the window to shout ‘tgankyou’ plus lots of commenting about the cost at all stages of the trip, with underlying hinting that the school are charging an awful lot for what it is, implying somewhere along the line, a rip off is going on.
Schools aren’t making money. Looking at the website won’t tell you the full costs involved in running the trip. If you want your children to have more than the barest essentials of an education these days you have to pay some money or you can’t have it - and that’s due to government funding of schools not schools themselves. So pay up and appreciate another adult is taking your child, meaning you don’t need to pay for your whole family to go. Pay up if you want your child to go and you can afford it and don’t if you don’t want them to go or can’t afford it. Know the schools are working hard to keep costs down but providing trips with specialist holiday providers and activities on site is just never cheap unless everyone is a volunteer. Remove the suspicion that the price includes some kind of hike that is benefitting the school or allowing teachers to have a ‘free holiday’ and consider if being 24/7 in charge of x number of whatever age is such a bargain and free holiday.
Sorry, rant over. I’m just disappointed that parents think schools look to ‘profit’ and are money grabbing. Remember how many staff are paying out of their own pockets to photocopy and buy resources or even breakfast because schools can’t, they can’t ask parents and they choose to do this rather than see children go short.