School trips

[MiconiumHappens]

Don't want to go into the details but were looking at offering to pay for DSDs school trips for the duration of her secondary education.

She will be going to a normal comprehensive. So as we can budget how much a year do you think school trips cost?

I know this is a contender for most boring thread of 2014 but anyone?

Excluding residentials I've paid no more than £70/year for DS. But residentials can be £200-£300+ so it depends entirely how many her school do. Why not ask them?
DS is at a state comp with average intake. You'd pay a lot more at a private school

There's quite a wide range, my ds goes to a standard comp but there have been offers of overseas trips that we couldn't afford - skiing and the like, stuff beyond the curriculum, entirely optional.

I would suggest you work out how much you'd be happy to pay and offer to pay for school trips up to x per year. For the regular educational trips £100-150 would be more than enough per year (including gift shop spending money etc) at my ds's school, not sure about others.

Curriculum trips or optional?
Compulsory I doubt more than a £100 a year
Optional can run into £1000's
Skiing, drama to Greece, Europe MFL trip

Be very careful what you mean

Thanks purple, it's a very complicated situation with negative reactions to just about anything we do contacting her new school (not allocated yet) would cause a major reaction. Thank you so much for replying.

I think I might suggest to DH an account we put money into monthly so it's there for the more pricey residentials.

Thanks again.

Depends what kind of school trips you mean - if just day trips (theatre visits, geography field trips etc) then £100 or so a year should be more than enough. It is also quite common to do some kind of PGL/outdoor activity trip for a few nights in year 7 as a bonding/getting to know you sort of thing - that could cost £200 or more depending on duration.

But lots of schools (including 'normal comprehensives') also offer optional things like foreign language exchanges, overseas sports tours, ski trips, art history trips to Paris or Florence and so on. Some of them can cost more than £1,000. I think doing at least one overseas trip with school is a great experience if you can afford it, but you need to be picky about what it is.

Thanks everyone, starting to get a better picture as to the curriculum ones vs optional.

Perhaps the offer should be curriculum DH covers as a given and optionals he can look at each time?

We have other DC so do need to be careful that we are fair to all 3 but that arrangement could mean we could achieve that.

Thanks again everyone.

In the early years the curriculum based trips have been fee at DS's school, but for GCSE there are trips such as France, field trips, history trips abroad, residentials. Many of these can easily be £400.

Then there are the 'outings'- so far we have paid about £27 twice for theme park visits.

It is bad enough negotiating which trips you pay out for without it becoming an issue between divorced parents, so having some kind of system seems very good.

Oh, we also pay termly for music lessons and an after school club, so think about who pays for that, too.

Had another thought how about DH pays for all curriculum trips and optional trips DH will pay for half if DSD is going on them?

Had another thought how about DH pays for all curriculum trips and optional trips DH will pay for half if DSD is going on them?

Our local secondary (normal area, not particularly well-off) just ran a £3000 trip to America. Would your DSD's parent/ carer be able to fund another £1500?

Also think about spending money, clothes, cases, lifts to airports etc.

Argh it's a minefield, but thank you for all your replies.

I don't know if she/we could afford it, maybe, maybe not I suppose it also depends on how much we would see DSD actually gaining from it and as there is no dialogue between the two families it could also become a bit of an arguing chip.

Increasing the maintenance may just be the easiest option? Will go through all this with DH and show him the thread thanks for all your input everyone.

Curriculum trips - £15
Panto - £15
Residential 3 day - £250
Week long trip - £500-800
Weekend trip to London - £250

Being fair to all DCs is an utter minefield even without the complications of separation.

DD1 will have been on two expensive school trips and a very expensive guide trip by the end of Y10.

DD2 hasn't been in anything and her hobby is cheaper.
Not in the least deliberate, MFL trip hasn't been offered and a sports camp was canceled due to lack of interest. DD2 left scouts and doesn't want to go skiing.

I always assumed that would balance DD1s Guide trip because she's much sportier, but she's also much more sociable. Not vaguely interests tend unless her mates wanted to go.

This is what we have spent on DS1's residential trips so far in (state) secondary school:
Y7: £200 (five day activity camp).
Y8: £350 (four day German trip).
Y9: £650 (eight day Classics trip).

There were other trips offered by the school (ski trips, sailing in France etc) but we have set a budget of £400 a year and these were the ones he chose.

The non-residential trips cost a fraction of this; less than £20 a year.

In y7 & Y8 DD had MFL/history trips to France/Belgium costing around £220 each time.
Nothing in y9, but y10 and y11 there will be France&Spain costing around £500 each (she is doing 2 MFL).
If she were doing Geography GCSE, we would have had to consider £1000 to go to Iceland.
She is doing Drama and could be going on theatre trips @ £40 each or so, but we go a lot as a family so don't bother.
She doesn't do the skiing, or outward bound trips.
DSD won't miss out if she doesn't go on every trip, eg even the y7 trip only takes 100 out of 200 pupils.

We can afford the trips, but we decide each one on a 'value for money' basis and educational benefit.
If you look on the school website (once decided) you may find info on trips there and possible costs. I know our school has this info available.

If you want a more regular outlay then perhaps consider offering to pay for instrumental lessons, which would be in the region of £300-£400 per year.

I work in a secondary school so to give you an idea:

In yr 7 we offer an MFL trip costing about £330 - take up usually about 70%; also usually an end of term trip costing maybe £10-£20 (theme park, cinema etc) - most students go on this. In yr 8 we do a residential which is about £300, similar in yr 9. In KS4 we offer trips related to subjects studied, so a student might have a chance of a history trip and a geography field trip and an MFL trip - could cost about £300 each.

There are also regular chances to go on theatre trips and such with English and Drama fac - these might only cost £20 or so or more if in London and are usually more for KS4 tho not always.

None of these are compulsory but all are helpful. We don't do high cost trips (very mixed area with a lot of FSM) but my DCs' school did, for example, a skiing trip to USA (!) which cost more than £1,000. DS1 didn't go.

All your replies are really helpful thank you so much everyone.

Round here they run into 3 categories:

day trips/field trips- to the theatre, art gallery, local site of geologial interest, max £15/20. These I would try to pay for as a matter of course for my own dc.

longer subject related trips, standard version- like ds' recent trip to Belgium, maybe £100/200. These I would try to pay for if of particular interest to specific child: e.g. ds is thinking of doing history GSCE and possibly A-level, so felt the Belgian trenches were relevant.

long and expensive trips- e.g. school trip to the Philippines connected with school charity or ski trips; up to maybe £1000, but pupils are expected to work on their own funding and most of them don't end up going. We can't pay for these and they would have to be very relevant for the individual child for us to part-fund them.

At my DS's local comprehensive school trips had been about £450 per year for first three years dropping to about £150 per year for Years 10 and 11. I don't know yet about 6th form and haven't included the year 8 ski trip my DS went on as only a minority went on it. My sons have been on a couple of gifted, talented and passionate trios which were extras and pushed the costs up but were very good.