School residential trips- how to pay for it?

[FiveHoursSleep]

DD1 is in year 6 and they go to the Isle of Wight ( from London) for a 4 nights.
We went to a parents' meeting about it last night and were told it's going to cost around £350.
This is a lot of money, and although DD will get to go, I'm wondering if she should put something towards it?
Some of her pocket money ( she gets £10 a month) or do some extra jobs to earn money towards it. Or do we just suck it up and pay for it without comment.
What do others do?

I wouldn't expect a child that age to contribute any money towards it. Any money they could contribute would be so small compared to the cost of the trip.

However DS's school make it a condition of their residential trips that they will not take any child whose behaviour or attitude is unacceptable. We've adopted the same policy at home - he won't go on the trip unless his behaviour is good. I suppose you could tie this in with an expectation of regular jobs round the house if you wanted to.

We certainly will be expecting her behaviour to be good but the trip isn't until June 2013, so we are bound to have a few issues during that time!
I was just wondering what most people did with their kids with regards to residential trips as our children have inflated senses of entitlement and I would like her to feel she'd earned the trip somehow.

Similar trip for my DD last year. Cost of £400 which we paid over 6 months.

I don't really think you should expect your DD to chip in, maybe just save a bit of her pocket money for spending money whilst she's away.

HOW MUCH!!!? I hope you get to pay it by instalments.

I would get her to put by some of her pocket money and and earn more from chores for her spending money. The more she earns/saves the more she has to buy sweets etc on the trip. And she'll see where here money goes as well rather than it paying for the actual trip.

That's PGL for you

I wouldn't expect her to pay for the trip with her own money, but I think if she's getting £10 a month it would be reasonable to tell her that if she wants to take spending money with her it comes out of that. I think they're allowed to take around £10, so she could choose between using all of June's pocketmoney, or having £2 less a month for the preceeding 5 months. Quite good to teach them about budgetting.

I think your are unreasonable to make her pay for her school trip, when she has little choice in going.

Ds is going on his school residental in October as it saves the school loads of money going before SATs. We are paying £185 for four days in Linchonshire.

Wow, that's a lot of money! I thought £250 was bad enough for a 4 day/3 night residential trip to the belgian battlefields in November was bad enough! Our DS2 is 14 and we haven't made him pay anything towards it as it is a requirement for his history GCSE. He will take his own spending money though.

Ours was over £400 for the week (PGL), and she didn't pay any of it, we paid in instalments all through the year. Hate to tell you this, but I don't think it gets better - my dd (now Y7) came home yesterday and said there was a skiing trip next year 'that all of my friends are going on' that cost £700. Don't think she will be going to that one!

That's a lot for a Y6 residential. Our school does its nearest PGL base as transport to the IofW got stupid.

I'm afraid it doesn't get better. DD1 did a MFL trip that cost about £400 and I'm waiting for a letter about a drama trip (it's on the diary). Battlefields was massively over subscribed or we would have had that too!

She also went in £££££ guide trip, but that seems to have been so well planed and massively enjoyed that I can't begrudge it.

I think the PGL trip will be the first and last for DS2. The only residential trip DS1 went on at secondary school was for GCSE drama, where it was actually helpful to see the plays. It nearly killed me to pay for that when I knew I could get him better and cheaper transport and accommodation If I'd booked it myself. £400+ requests for trips to Europe for geography, history and MFL were filed with the recycling. Nice if you can afford it, but not compulsory, and not essential for good grades either. He didn't bother to bring home information about journeys venturing outside Europe.

It's not a compulsory trip, they can choose whether to go or not but I think most will go.
I like the idea of asking her to save her own pocket money, and I'm sure we can use the trip as a carrot when necessary.