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?

This sounds crazy. The Malaysian Ringgit is suffering at the moment so living costs in Sabah and Sarawak are very cheap. Internal flights are normally with Air Asia, and are again very cheap, and if booked early enough long haul ones are not too bad. If self booking you could probably do it for £8,000 a family of four, see a lot and stay in some nice places.

Watch out for North Borneo. The Foreign Office have just revised their travel guidance for some of the islands. More about problems over the border in the Philippines, but the new advice is not to travel.

That said Borneo is wonderful.

(Schools ought to be wary of some of these firms. DD went on an expensive trip, mainly to Tobago (why would you go to Tobago to play hockey). Luckily one of the girls had relatives out there who knew how much they were paying and so were able to insist that they were given a reasonable food budget. Again local costs were low but the firm were still trying to skimp.)

Oh yes, we had the same letter for Bloody Borneo earlier this year. I used it as a worked maths example for DS to work out how much he would need to raise each week. I was surprised to find that there were ten people signed up, we are not in an area where families have that amount of cash to splash about.

DS will not be at the school in 2017 so it was never going to be a runner.

DD will be able to go to China for three weeks to volunteer and have a week seeing the sights, it will cost £1800. They go in term time (just after the A level exams when they are on study leave) so the flights are cheaper.

DS went to China last year for two weeks. It cost £1100 and was heavily subsidised by the Confucius Institute otherwise he wouldn't have been able to go. He is learning Chinese and the trip involved lessons every day and trips to the Forbidden city and Great Wall etc. His friend went on the rugby tour to South Africa which cost twice as much and included shark cage diving (??!!).

Both DS and DD go to state grammars but the attitude to trips is very different. DS was able to go skiing as it was in Austria, by coach and cost £800. At DD's school that same year (before DD joined) the skiing trip was to Whistler for nearly £2k! Fortunately DD isn't keen on skiing and is going on a history trip to France and Belgium instead.

The school my son is going to next year (he's in year six) is also going to Borneo in summer 2017 for their older pupils - cost is very close to £3k and that is only for two weeks....... I have four children lol !! my summer holiday this year for all six of us (in Europe) is only costing £600 !!!

Most expensive at an independent was £3900 to the Galapogos Islands. He didn't go! He did go on about three sports tours though for about £2k ish a shot and plenty of others at about £1k. DD has had lots too.

Adds, dh is a sucker for this because he didn't even show his parents the letters when he was at school.

DS2 went on a 3 week rugby trip to New Zealand with stop offs in LA and Fiji. That was in 2010 and was a bit under £3k. State grammar school.

He says it was the highlight of his time at school. I still have mixed feelings about it - a wonderful experience for him but tough for rugby playing school friends whose families couldn't afford it. Fortunately we'd saved most of his birthday and xmas money since he was born so he paid a third of it.

I am a huge fan of school trips and the enrichment they give to children. However selecting on ability to pay at a state school is unacceptable. It clearly defines who is richer and by definition, who is less well off and a bit second class. It also means children chat about the trip for months and others who may well have benefitted are left out. Any notion of inclusion goes out of the window when trips are so expensive. Additionally, I do think poorer children never do world challenge because they do not know enough people to raise the money. If you live in a former mining area or are living in fear of losing your job in the steelworks, for example, can you realistically raise £3900 when everyone around you is poor, concerned about future earnings and many are on benefits? The whole thing is designed for the better off to do charitable works, rough it a bit like William did, and pay for the privilege. It has little to do with benefitting all children if it has to be self funded.

I think trips are something that schools could consult parents about, but they never seem to. Perhaps parents could be asked what costs they would see as reasonable and then be told what trips could be offered and what would be cut out. In all these trips, the staff are being paid for by the money the parents pay. If they need a ratio of 1:10, then 10% of the charge is for that cost.

The most expensive trip mine ever went on was £1500. We can afford it and it was at an independent school. The sports trips were in excess of £3000 years ago. Mine were not in teams so this was avoided. A lot of the trips were at the whim of the teachers. If they fancied Whistler then they went to Whistler. Austria would have been perfectly fine.

£5000 World Challenge trip to Namibia for a month. DD1 is supposed to do her own fundraising, but how? She's a boarder. And I've no intention of going on GoFundMe or something like that - it's like holding out a begging bowl.

DD2 is going to California at the end of this year with the school. 3 weeks is costing about $6,000 so about £3100 plus spending money. It's an exchange trip where they spend time with an American family and go to school while they're there.

This was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime for her and a one off - then she told us about a school photography trip to New York in 2018! I told her she can go on that one if I go too

Ridiculous price....you could do a. 'Projects Abroad '' course for much less than that

I'm dreading the secondary school years for this reason. We don't even get a family holiday because of finances - not even a weekend away a year. Never have.

The idea of having to raise cash like that is boggling.

£5k to Galapagos and South America for a month, kids fundraising, at private school (not mine).

Bojorojo how do you propose these trips are paid for? I'm happy to pay taxes, even increased taxes to improve education and the NHS. I'm not subsidising optional school trios though.

My DH never even gave his parents the trip letter. Buy, now being able to and having nothing was one of his main drivers to make a better life.

That should have read: but being unable to

There was this at my school, in sixth form. No one in my year had than money so one girl who was really interested got sponsorship, funding by fundraising via bake sales, etc!

The same applied to me, Beaufort, but I hated the thought of my children not being able to participate.

The funding of trips should be down to the parents in each school. I am. It suggesting money comes from other sources. Schools should consult parents as to what they can afford. In the depressed areas of the country and where people have huge financial commitments, this may well be a lower amount. If the majority of parents think the limit should be £50 or £1500 then so be it. I know lots of people who would find even £50 a real stretch for several children.

The more expensive skiing trips and more exotic trips would not run but there is plenty that can be done for less money. If parents have plenty of money they can book a trip to Namibia if they want. There are plenty of projects families can participate in. It is just not reasonable for participants on trips being selected by the wealth of the parents. If schools had a policy on trip stated on their web sites, prospective parents would know where they stood.

Should read .... I am not.....

Ah, I completely agree with you in that context. Our D.C. went to a state primary. Slightly different but something we did when they left was to set up a small fund to purchase and maintain some musical instruments and to fund peripatetic music tuition for children who otherwise couldn't have those lessons or buy the instruments. It's only a handful each year because the school is in quite a "leafy" area. We are still in touch and DH would always make-up a shortfall for the Y6 residential trip. The music thing just got formalised.

Funnily, I cd have gone on what I wanted and am much stricter about school trips and subscriptions for the DC.

The thousands of pounds can be fundraised, but it is a serious slog. I know groups through scouting and guiding who have done it, but it's always been a real group commitment over a couple of years, with a lot of support, experience and well established networks. I doubt most schools are putting in that level of support, especially if half the group are in a position to be heavily subsidised by family.

My son is doing this this year to India , it has been a really hard effort to raise the money some from sponsored events but most has come from the bank of mum and dad .
One reason we made the commitment for him to go is that he is autistic and we felt as his parents it would help him improve further with his independence / self reliance . The people who run these tours have never taken a child with learning difficulties on them , so a big eye opener and a new experience for them as well , one of the teachers who is going is making a real effort to get to know my son before they head , as there be little communication whilst there away . He's previously been away with the school on a history trip . So they do know him .
He also lucky that one of his really close friends is also going and he has worked on a project with the head girl of the school and she got to know him fairly well .

Personally I would love to see more voluntary trips - building wells - easing orphans - helping farm type things - going to schools in an African village - would be much more eye opening and maturing

10 kids raise £3,600 to travel to somewhere far away to "help" people who aren't helpless, they just lack the funds (for multiple reasons).

£36,000 to an impoverished community could do an awful lot.

It doesn't look so fun on uni applications though or in interviews.

Cosy King the trip my son is going on will see him start with building the foundations for a nursery school near Ladakh , for children of normadic families , so the women can work the fields without having to take young infants with them , give the children a chance at an earlier education and provide them with two hot meals a day .
So he is going to be benefiting others as well as him learning new skills himself . Thousand pounds from each student is used to fund building material / equipment etc for the school . They also do four day trek and have few days to see bits of different areas of India . So three weeks graft and week holiday as such .

I really dislike the trips where kids are involved with building projects etc - as I feel it takes paid work away from people in the developing country and most of the students don't have the skills to do the job properly.
I prefer to see students adding value in areas where they do have skills - encouraging local children to practise their english etc, playing games with children and talking about their home country.