To consider raising concerns about this residential school trip

[TheMandaloriann]

im feeling upset about a planned two night school trip and I would really appreciate some guidance on whether im overreacting or I should ask to speak with the headteacher.

DS8’s school emailed last week asking for interest in a potential school trip. Yesterday, they emailed confirming the trip was going ahead and asking for a deposit by the end of next week.

I’m very supportive of school trips in general. My DS10 is going on a similar residential trip this year with the scho. I’ve volunteered for at least 60% of school day trips to date, as they’re usually short of chaperones. I can see the immense benefits the children derive from educational trips, so this isn’t in any way an anti-trips stance. However, I’m very uncomfortable with how this trip is being planned. I’ve tried to set them out here coherently but my thoughts are a bit jumbled at the moment.

1. My biggest problem is the location - in the initial email, the school only mentioned a company which runs the trip. The company has about 20 UK sites. In response to the initial email, I highlighted the fact that many of the children would be staying away from home for the first time, and it would be appropriate to chose one of the many sites near the school. The school has booked a site almost 4 hours away, it’s one of the most distant sites available. I feel uncomfortable that we would not be able to reach DS if needed and whilst I would have been comfortable with this site for a year 6 trip, it’s poor judgement to book for a yr 4 residential.
2. My concerns about how far the site is ties into the schools track record of supervision: the school is poor at supervising children and bullying is rife in the playground. The kids will sleep in rooms of 4, without any staff obviously, so plenty of opportunities for bullying. As the staff are ineffective, children have learnt not to complain and parents often sort out issues amongst ourselves. Worst of all, DS has been told several times that he should just ‘keep himself away’ from children that bully - that strategy obviously won’t work on a residential trip. For example, DS8 is squeamish about food touched by others - we’ve had instances of bullies spitting in his food, rubbing boogers on him etc as they know it triggers him. The school tends to put this down to accidents, but DS feels it’s targeted.
3. Finally, this isn’t a concern specifically for DS but I’m still concerned with how the school has handled it. The school is in a very mixed area by the wealth/ income of families and there have been several incidents of bullying based on wealth/ size of house etc. I know at least 5 families who won’t afford the trip or will struggle to, given we have had a weeks notice. Another 2 children have SEN which the school can’t manage on a residential trip and 2 children have severe allergies and aren’t old enough to administer their own medicine. Some of these children will go, but with difficulty. Again, I highlighted the fact that it probably wasn’t wise to plan an expensive trip (c.£300) and a cheaper one night trip might be more appropriate given recent incidents. The school has simply said ‘feedback has been considered’ but not changed anything . The class teacher speaks to the children about the trip daily - the kids knew the trip was proposed before parents did and several children have mentioned that she’s said things like ‘it’s not a real trip if everyone doesn’t make the effort to go’ and ‘you should all be trying your hardest to join’.

I guess people might want to know why I haven’t raised any of these issues with the school before? Honestly, I really do understand that schools are struggling enormously with resources at the moment and I’ve tried to mitigate issues ar home / with other parents until now.

if I was to go speak to the headteacher, I think I’d like to know:

• why did they choose the farthest site for yr 4?
• how will they prevent bullying overnight
• how do they plan to ensure children unable to join aren’t left feeling left out until the trip?

sorry for the essay, just trying to give as many facts as I can

If you don't want your child to go, don't send them.

You don't have the right to interrogate the headteacher about the plans. They asked for your feedback, you gave it, they ignored it (or couldn't act on it, perhaps).

If you feel the school don't deal well with bullying, then move your children from the school.

When my dd was eight she went on her first school trip nine hours drive away. She's anaphylactic to peanuts. She practiced with an epipen trainer pen as did some of her friends.

If there was a real emergency, like a broken leg, then you would travel the 4 hours to your DC. Otherwise it doesn’t really matter if it’s one hour or four hours. No child gets picked up because they are a bit teary.

As for the overnight bullying worries then see if you can find out in advance who they will be sharing a room with.

The worries about affordability and the needs of other children aren’t anything to do with you.

What difference will,it make having the information on why they chose the furthest site? Presumably there will be a reason.

If the staff are ineffective and your child is being bullied at school then that's an issue for right now. I'd move schools if that was the case. Really, you are letting him down by not sorting this out regardless of the trip.

And what if, just what if, your child went and had the most amazing time...

You are worrying, excessively, about things that may not even happen.

I have a Yr4 child going on a residential next year. He has SEN. I have my concerns about how he may cope, but, he wants to go and I will stand and wave him off and await him to come back with new experiences and stories to tell me. I can't worry about the what ifs.

They probably picked that (PGL?) site as it had availability.

I'd share your concern. As a teacher and parent I'm dubious as to why the last minute organisation and mentioning a 2 night stay. I would not let my child go. I wouldn't worry about missed bonding etc as they do that age 13. Sorry if I've misunderstood ages of children. Your concerns are valid re safeguarding and I'd raise this with HT but still wouldn't allow my child to go.

PGL is frightfully expensive right now, school have probably chosen the cheapest option. I don't like the lack of notice either. It seems some head teachers have zero idea how hard it can be to scrape up £100 in December.
I do feel your pain on this. If you refuse to send him, you'll be the bad guy and if you do send him something may go wrong and you'll be worried sick. Could you announce that, 'oh dear, we've already booked our family holiday those dates'. I've done that with ours.

The site was likely chosen for a combination of availability, cost, and onsite activities. Raising the site issue is pointless and will detract from real concerns.

unless you personally have a child that needs medication or has allergies, you don’t need to be advocating for those issues. We do plenty of advocating with the school. They hear from us all the time. We know exactly what our children need. Extra voices who are not actual stakeholders will not help. You can help by not fighting decisions that the school makes.

the only thing that you need to address is the bullying. For that, you should be asking that your child be placed in a room with peers he trusts. The teachers will be aware of the interpersonal dynamics here. They shouldn’t want to mix students in a way that will cause problems.

The school might stop organising trips altogether if parents are such pains to deal with. If you don't like the trip, don't let your kid go. Simples

I completely agree with every word of this.

I’d be annoyed with a weeks notice to pay but a trip 4 hours away with kids sleeping in dorms together in year 4 is quite normal. I’m a teacher and took year 4 to cardiff one year which was over 4 hours away. They were in rooms of 4-6 kids per room. They had a brilliant time as did we. We gave the parents around 6 months notice to be able to pay though. Kids with special needs and dietary requirements came without an issue. Meds were administered when needed. All was fine.

your main issue imo is that you have a school that doesn’t deal with bullying. Why have you kept your child there?

The distance really isn't unreasonable at that age.

Lots of kids go in their first trips at age 7+ including with brownies or cubs. PGL take kids from 7, and are happy with any site.

At a year older mine went on an international school trip and were about 13 hours drive away.
That said, if you are not comfortable with the distance don't send him.

Lots of these places went out of business during covid and the school have almost certainly chosen the cheapest they can get, hence the distance.

Bullying at the school is a completely separate issue.

Residentials are very expensive and if school have booked it short notice then that is why they've ended up 4 hours away.

As the parent of a child who had a serious accident on a residential trip, doesn't matter how far away it is, you will make sure you get there if you need to.

Honestly the principle doesn't have to justify her plan to you. It sounds like you want to hang a bright light over her head. Maybe keep your dd at home if you feel it's too far away and you're a bit nervous. There will be other trips.

I’m really surprised by both your points - firstly, why bother asking for feedback if you don’t intend to consider it? I’ve spoken to other parents, and out of class of 30, I think 10 families weren’t sure. Is it just majority rules in the case of feedback? If so, that should be explained?

secondly, you mention that if your child is being bullied, move schools. Again, I’m sure I don’t have to explain that there are different degrees of bullying, and that the decision to move schools in nuance - for example, based on what’s available, the disruption to the victim (rather than perpetrators). I’m shocked that you think bullied children should have to put up or ship out.

Don’t send them then 🤷🏻‍♀️

I can understand that the residential must be very expensive booked at short notice - I guess I don’t really understand why it had to be booked at such short notice? the school generally is not great with planning or communication, again that’s not a huge problem day to day but I don’t understand why something like this wouldn’t be planned properly?

I am not sure why your son is at a school that does not supervise the children well and handles bullying so ineffectually. I would give the trip a miss for your son, and be looking for a new school.

It is badly thought through. And it's just making things harder for themselves.

Our y4 trip was an overnight 30 minutes away. Cheaper as didn't need the bus for so long and close to reassure post COVID never been away from home kids. That really helped my SEN child attend as she was worried about not being able to sleep in a strange set up without her usual routines etc. I was able to reassure I could pick her up at midnight or whenever and drop her back before she was missed.

Specific permission was given to allow teachers to administer all prescription meds and hay fever meds.

Price wise I'd expect school to subsidise those who struggle. And not just those on FSM.

How many children are there in the class/year group? Can you imagine every single parent contacting the head to ask her to justify whatever random questions they might have? She's not get anything else done

It really is a bit bonkers to think that you and every parent have the right to ask her why that centre, etc etc.

There will be meetings closer to the time when parents will find out more and can ask their questions, but now is really not the time for individual parents to be contacting her and expecting their feedback to be given the kind of attention and response you seem to expect.

It is short notice, and I think finding the deposit right now is the only thing that warrants a call to the office (not the head) from those who can't find it, to ask for a bit of time. The rest really isn't your business.

Your child goes or not

You also have no right to do other parents thinking for them, they will send their children or not

The combination of food-related bullying + lack of supervision + allergies would be concerning to me.

Thank you, that’s helpful to understand. I guess I need to think more about why I’ve kept DS at the school - I guess partially because he is generally happy and achieving well. As a teacher, I’m sure you can understand that in a class of 30, he gets on really well with all but 1 or 2 kids, the problem is when those 1 or 2 decide to target him, they’re relentless. In terms of how to raise it with the school, I’m really not sure how to - a lot of the incidents are explained as accidents or mistakes or quite subtle. The school seems to be good at discipline kids if they happen to observe the incident at the time, but don’t seem to make any changes? I’ll give some examples and I’d be grateful for advice on how to raise them with his teachers (these are the ones I’ve observed myself) once these 2 kids pretended they had forgotten his name and had to call him ‘piggy’ in taunting voices. They kept it up for an hour and got all the other kids to join in. dS was really upset. They repeat it from time to time. Once in playtime they played ‘hunting’ with DS - they were hunting him with sticks in the playground - eventually one hit DS (and it’s impossible to say whether it was accidental or on purpose) and he needed a stitch. Once, they had a small fight about a game, one held him down and the other one kicked DS - this was explained as all three boys scuffling rather than DS being picked on. The hardest part is that DS also likes them and often chooses to play with them, then the ‘games’ escalate. Sorry I’m writing an essay, I think this is my real worry - Im worried there is an underlying nastiness towards DS in some of these games and I’m worried another adult won’t spot them or help DS

At the school my kids went to the year 4 residential was a camp out in the school hall. The cost was the money for a trip to the local chippy on the Friday night. Saturday they did lots of games in the school field. They all did it, no one priced out.
Year 5 they went to an activity centre owned by the LA for a weekend, again quite cheap and all went.
Year 6 they went to Belgium and France. Only one child didn't go.