Am I being fleeced for school residential?

[squeakyclean13]

Does anyone have a school residential at Condover and if so, how much do you pay? We are being asked to pay £400 for 3 days which seems quite a lot. Are we paying over the odds or is this the correct price? Condover is a PGL activity centre.

You won't be being fleeced - schools charge the cost of the trip.

I paid £250 but it was only an hour down the road.

Paid £480 for a 5 day trip to the Isle of Wight in 2022.

We’re paying £150 for 3 days.

School have made adjustments, fundraising, close to home, using minibuses from the centre in several trips, children taking packed lunches for the first day.

They’ve also provided a payment plan so we actually paid a small monthly amount from September. We live in a disadvantaged area, so without these adjustments very few children would attend.

Thanks very much for all your comments. It sounds like it's a fair price which is reassuring to hear. My trust in the school is at a low ebb so it's great to be able to reality check my concerns.

Sounds about right for a 3 night trip.

That was not that much more than I paid when ds was in year 6. He’s year 12 now

Our school set up payment plans for all parents and it was very much a ‘we expect all kids to go and whatever we need to do to help you help them go, we’ll do’

it was a fabulous experience for them so absolutely worth the money for the 3 days

it’s relevant to say that I was extremely hard up at the time, single parent etc etc.

£400 with all food, travel and activities seems quite reasonable to me.

Whether residential trips like this are necessary or money well spent is a other thing, but if they're going to run one, the price seems about right.

The school won't be making a profit.

It really varies depending on area school location you are going to etc. My dc will be doing one in a couple of years and I think the ones a year above who are paying now are paying about 200

My daughter went to Condover two years ago. The cost was £400 then too. So I think with inflation you’re doing ok.

For what it’s worth she had an amazing time.

There are also cover costs to consider.

Sounds about right. We've just paid £375 for a 3 day PGL about 1:20 away for dc3 for this coming September. Dc2's last year cost £325 & dc1's in 2021 cost £250 (booked & paid for a year earlier as should have taken place the week lockdown came in). All the same centre, although dc1's was originally planned for elsewhere, in spring. They've been having better luck with the September weather so have stuck with it.

Why would you be being fleeced ?

Ours was £400 for four nights (M-F) in Wales in the middle of winter. Parents had to supply full on thermals and walking gear. More an exercise in endurance than enjoyment. It seems more expensive because a week in the sun costs about that! It wasn’t expensive objectively I suppose but I’d rather have had that money towards a family holiday. Schools need to think about the squeezed middle. Less well off had the trip paid for for them
of course. We had to scrimp. Made me resentful given the price of everything else going up.

My DS has just done a 3 day PGL trip and it cost £90. His school is an academy though which means trips are subsidised. I paid way less than £400 for his week long trip in year 6 though (not subsidised!).

Why does being an academy mean the trips are subsidised @TheFormidableMrsC?

I don't know, they just are. I was told this at the first year 7 presentation prior to the new term. It's to do with private funding they receive but I have not delved into this.

We're paying £600 for a trip to a similar place, that is for 4 nights though. It's also not particularly close so I suspect a lot of it is the coach. They have an instalment plan and I know the school are subsidising it for pupil premium children (not sure how).

I have just paid £350 for PGL in June for my YR6 DS! That's for 2 nights!!

Most treachery and TAs don't receive any additional pay to go in these trips. It's true they don't have to pay to go usually - organisations like PGL offer a certain number of teacher spaces 'for free' depending on the number of children going and their ages. Any 'overtime' is unpaid if it involved overnight, weekends and holidays.

If still not sure you can request a breakdown of costs to check. These should be available to you. Infact at DD's schools they used to be included in the letter home.

Our school does crap school trips towards others locally, what lots of parents don't realise is the PTA's fund them and our PTA doesn't do much.
Maybe you could organise an event to bring the cost down for future years.

Really?
Nice to know school staff are held in such high regard that now we're being accused on a national parenting website of attempting to deliberately rip parents off.
Remember this when you no longer have qualified teachers standing in front of your child's class.

I think that is unfair.

We all know that education is under funded right now. What not everyone knows is that there are rules regarding funding school trips that bans schools from profiting from them. if there weren't rules it wouldn't necessarily be bad of schools to take a 10% profit from each one they organise to help general funding. It wouldn't be 'ripping them off' or 'fleecing' them, it would be an income generation stream, in the same way that Christmas Concert ticks can be or 'books for schools'.

I'd say that's right at the moment;the cost of everything is huge.

Things that have probably contributed to the cost being so high

*Coach travel;costs of coaches are through the roof at the moment
*The accommodation;the cost of providing gas,electricity and the cost of staff wages plus insurance premiums in general to keep said accommodation running
*Food prices are insane even the "cheap" items.
*Activities will have increased again due to staffing costs/insurance premiums etc

I'm guessing it's a hard choice for the schools to either cancel their residential trips and not offer kids the same opportunities as the children who came before them or offer them at the hugely increased costs.

It's not just things like school residential it's the cost of holidays in general;I know several people who have had to either sacrifice this summers holiday or find a much cheaper alternative as many places have doubled the cost of accommodation.