Most expensive school trip yet?

[TheSecondOfHerName]

We have just received a letter offering DS1 the chance to go on a school trip in the summer of 2017. The cost will be £3980. This is a state school.

The trip does sound amazing (4 weeks trekking in Borneo with Camps International). But £3980?

What the actual...?

DS1 had the offer to go to LA for 5 days at a cost of just over £1k but luckily it coincided with a German exchange trip (2 weeks, work experience, all costs covered for £300).

£3,980 is the cost of a family holiday! Interesting to see how many parents take up the offer...

Is this just a trip or a World Challenge trip? If it is World Challenge the students have to do their own fund raising. Some of DD's friends are doing World Challenge to India this year. It costs £3,500, but they have all been madly raising money to fund it.

"the students have to do their own fund raising"
Not sure whether World Challenge has tightened up in the last few years, but when DS went, they were certainly encouraged to do this, but in practice, Bank of Mum and Dad and Relatives usually had to chip in (plus wages from Saturday jobs etc).

I suspect in real life bank of mum and dad are supplementing the fund raising. DD's boyfriend has done a lot of fundraising, by babysitting and doing other paid work.

Ds has rugby tour of 3.6k plus fundraising (state school). I refuse to ask other people to pay towards this though, so we will have to pay. He had a half term one this year which was 2.4k.

At least it is overseas, ds just sent me an email about Kings College London 2 week pre-university summer school, he hadn't looks at the cost, it is £3000 for the residential (£1800 if you commute). Who can afford that!!?

Yeah 4k is a heck of a lot of fundraising - the money will, realistically, be coming from family.

DD1 is doing a trip to South America this year. There has been massive emphasis put on them fundraising for it though. Part time jobs, cake sales, and running a coffee shop during parent meetings at school. Cost for three weeks volunteering/treking will be £3.7k

Fuck me.

Early April Fools day joke.

Our World challenge opportunity was a £4300 trip to China. We worked out that dd1 would need to earn/raise £50 a week.

Needless to say she didn't apply in the end.

Dearest trip she has been on was a weeks skiing in the alps. They flew over and it included everything for £780. Very good value in my opinion.

Sorry am I being a bit naive or are you all talking about "state" secondary schools.....or Indies or grammars or ALL !!

That's just insane, I can't imagine state schools around me would try anything even for £1k, how on earth do people afford it?

I loathe being asked for money for this kind of thing. It's invariably very middle class children. There is no way I'm going to fund their holiday, but as the expression goes, 'refusal often offends'.

I have twins so that would be £8k!
I love holidays and we do spend a lot on them, but he'll would freeze over before I paid that! I can't see many middle class families forking out for that. It's bonkers!

I agree Matilda I think it's so rude. We will pay ds fundraising extra on top of his contributions.
He has had cricket tour to dubai, trip to Finland, rugby tour to NZ and he could go to the Amazon this year but we said no .

It's a grammar school, dd was at Sec modern and had one trip in six years to belgium.

Ds best friends are twins, they are going on all the trips, so expensive for them.

I know I'll get slated for this and told it isn't true but DH's friend's wife (still with me) has arranged all sorts of educational trips at their state secondary school. They've done China Borneo Russia and the USA and the trips include such educational things as days out at the F1 racing! The best thing is that since they go for such a long time they generally need additional adults and so DH's friend who doesn't even work for the school (and is a big F1 fan) gets to go too...

My DSs are at an independent and whilst there are lavish school trips (mainly rugby tours, skiing etc) there is also an acceptance that a lot of us are broke through paying the fees and so only a small proportion of the children go.

my nephew goes to private school, last year it was a trip to Barbados at £2350.
Luckily My ds is only 6 months so years before I have to think of this

at the Kings Collage summer school! I went on one for free!!
The dc's are only 4 and 7 and I'm getting a little scared.

College!! Not collage, obviously!

Ds's America trip (one week) is costing £1500 (state sixth form)
That's his holiday

Wow. Just wow. Dcs will have an awful lot of disappointments at secondary, or have to work their socks off after nursery every day...