Another quick poll: should a primary school allow children to take handheld games consoles on a week-long school trip?

[Anna8888]

Yes or no.

No

Absolutely not. They have the other 51 weeks of the year to sit around and fiddle with electronic gadgets. Part of the objective of a school trip is to provide opportunites that might well not be available to them at home. That includes interacting verbally with their peers.

And brainfreeze, teachers are not paid for going away on school trips over and above their normal pay. Those who are parents of young children will have to have made extensive arrangements for cover of their own DCs for the duration, often at considerable expense.

No.

Absolutely NO!

No, not fair to give teachers the responsibility, not fair to children who dont have one and all in all a recipie for disaster!

No, they could get broken, lost or stolen.

We don't let them (I won't even let them bring them in on the last day of term) because the risk of theft of breakages.

We do encourage them to take card games or top trumps which are great for a coach too.

No.

Frankly I don't care about the lost stolen or broken aspect. I just think if a group of children are off on a trip together they should be doing bizarre old fashioned things like interacting with each other and taking notice of their surroundings and reading books and playing games WITH EACH OTHER. Not going into electronic zone out territory.

Hear, hear, Seeker!

No

no

why do you want to know? What does OP think?

no

No.

Not fair on those who don't have them.

Too much potential for loss/stolen etc consoles and games.

No

Brainfreeze, your misconception that teachers get paid for the whole of a residential trip explains why 28 out of 30 parents this year failed to say anything to me when they collected their children that was even closely related to thank you, even though I gave up seeing my 2 year old ds for 5 days so that THEIR baby could enjoy a fantastic outward bound residential.

No.

(Trip ds went on had really quite fierce announcement letter: NO games consoles/electronic games stuff of any sort. Fully agreed with this - too many reasons to count. Actually comes down to what reason is there in favour?)

Now will read thread!

Thanks everybody

I think no but unfortunately a few parents at school think it is cruel to detach a child from his/her handheld for a week and are lobbying teacher to let children take handhelds on a school trip.

They'll be the first to moan when their little darlings come back without them!

At our school, the children were allowed to take them or any cther hand held devices e.g. dvd player but just for the journey (4 hours)

The teacher then took them off of them for the 3 day residential but then gave them back for the journey home. I think thats reasonable dont you.

BTW - hating the snide comments about teachers being paid for the residential trip - NO THEY ARE NOT! Far from it infact. Residential trips are rewarding but so tiring - you are responsible for 50 + children 24 hours a day. Trust me, teachers pay does not even cover half of what they do, and thats not even considering the hours of risk assessing, budgeting, letter writing, parent meetings, collecting money etc beforehand.