Residential trip COST!!!

[Cauliflowersqueeze]

Monday-Friday on a PGL or PGL-style break with Year 7 or 8....

I really think £415 is far too much but these companies appear to be constantly putting up prices!

Has anyone experienced anything for a reasonable price?

I think they are a good idea from the point of view of being a residential experience for kids with their friends. But I agree that sometimes the activities are naff

We go away the last week of term, tue-thu. Ppl was about £250 plus coach and ferry to Isle of Wight. We went to wildchild-same activities plus bushcraft but tents not dorms. Kids preferred it and I liked the camping element. Was much nearer London so coach was much cheaper and near enough for parents to collect ill children!

Did it all in for £190 for 130 kids.

Cauliflowersqueeze - yes, it’s the dreadful quality of the activities I object to, not the principle of a school trip. I also think that the big organisations like Kingswood have a vested interest in the trip lasting from Mon-Fri as that suits their organisation and occupancy but IMO trips really don’t need to last that long to be effective. The quality of the activity is far more important than the number of days as a driver of effectiveness.

The Kingswood centre at Ashford that my DD’s school went to was about as educational as a Butlin’s holiday camp and the staff about the same calibre...

DS1 is going to South of France at the end of August with school on a Sailing Holiday. It's cost nearly £600 but we have had nearly 2 years to pay for it.

I would have moved heaven and earth to get DS1 there even if it meant scrimping on other things...for him it's not just a holiday but a huge confidence building exercise in putting him completely out of his comfort zone and learning to be with new people.

Currently on leading a scout camp. £175 for Saturday to Saturday, includes two activity sessions a day, all food and a day trip to London zoo. We did parent drop off at camp which was about 1.5hrs from home. Obviously there are a lot of differences, we cater for ourselves and camp rather than use dorms, but £400+ is excessive. Enroll your child/children in scouts or guides!

i would be quite happy to pay for school trips like this, but as a carer for my husband i find it quite difficult to pay for them as you can imagine its a really tight budget, if as parents we could be informed a lot earlier as even a year of putting money towards it still means 40.00+ a month which is a lot to us on limited income.

@ChocolateWombat i didnt suggest or imply it was the schools fault and i havent been pestering the school. Please dont make assumptions, i have issues with PGL and their processes, nothing to do with the school or the teachers.

Currently on leading a scout camp. £175 for Saturday to Saturday, includes two activity sessions a day, all food and a day trip to London zoo. We did parent drop off at camp which was about 1.5hrs from home. Obviously there are a lot of differences, we cater for ourselves and camp rather than use dorms, but £400+ is excessive. Enroll your child/children in scouts or guides!
I'm a Guiding Leader so understand where you are coning from, but:
as a volunteer many of you will have undertaken instructor training for activities. Our activity insurance is paid for by annual census: schools' aren't. Your parents did a 3-hour round trip to drop and collect (and may have stayed to help with pitching). The cooks and cleaners and orderlies were all unpaid. Your admin is done by volunteers.
I'm off on camp this weekend, and if the organisation, form filling and admin, printing costs etc alone had been paid at a the living wage it would have added £10 per head on to the cost for the girls. Businesses can't fundraise to cover the costs of equipment, staff training, cleaners etc. If you can do bare bones for £175 not including any staff costs or travel with 2 activities per day, then actually a PGL cost at £415 which includes 3 activities with staff per day, fully catered, bedding, cleaning, coach transport etc starts to sound more than reasonable!

Good points Gah. People forget all the 'behind the scenes' costs and only think of food, accommodation and instructors often. Lots of people also do make comparisons to things like Scouts which are run by volunteers and so include much of the work for free and have the back-up of a large organisation for things like insurance and training. So it's not really comparing like-with-like.

Clearly there is a price differential. If your child can benefit from all the positives of an organisation such as Scouts or Guides, then yes, they can do lots of activities at a lesser price - all good. In purely activity terms it might be similar, but being on a school residential is different simply in terms of the fact it is with your school group and although the he activities are part of it, there is more to it too. And it is is about the collective, not just the individual - something many parents don't seem interested in considering. Here I, not talking about those who opt out because they genuinely can't afford it, but those who opt out saying 'we've done it before' or 'we can do it cheaper with Guides' - because when a few start opting out, the whole experience becomes different, because it's meant to be a collective thing which becomes a common experience and memory, if it's for a whole year group. And for some children, who aren't in Guides or Scouts, or whose whole family can't afford to go on an activity holiday, going on a school trip, which whilst expensive only involves paying for one person, the school version of the activity will be the only one their child ever gets the chance to do - but I guess people don't really think about that bigger picture and the idea of supporting what the school is trying to achieve, but just their child and childs experiences.

I do think it sounds a lot (my son did an Isle of White PGL last year mon-fri coach & ferry crossing was £395 all in) however I do think you should still offer it as the increase in confidence in so many of the children was tangible. I would add to that the following:
Tell them early & offer a payment plan

Be transparent about the costs, give a breakdown of travel, food etc tell them you've negotiated best prices, look at ways of cost cutting etc

If they are Yr7&8 encourage children to take ownership and raise some of the money themselves by babysitting, paper round, car washing, odd jobs

That's a lovely thought ChocolatWombat, very eloquently put, but, realistically, not many families I know, can afford £450 - £500 to 'support the bigger picture'. We both work and are by no means below any poverty lines, but we also have 3 dc and need to make decision on big financial spending. Obviously those decisions are made on what our dc will get out of the experience, and, unless you are some incredibly rich benefactor, so will all parents' decisions.
That's not to say we don't think of others - indeed, both dh and I are - like Gahwhatever - those people who volunteer many hours of our time every week to give others just such experiences at minimal costs, but I don't think it is realistic to expect parents to sacrifice something else for their family, so that "other children" get to enjoy an expensive trip more.

Chocolatewombat....You say its not all about the costs but I think in this case its cost justification and PGL are making a huge margin out of an educational trip which cannot be right.
The actual base cost of that trip would be in the region of £130pp (£35 per head food,£40 accommodation,£20 towards employee costs and £25 coach and £10 cover for admin/insurance)....this is probably an over estimation if its a large cohort trip. Its over 300% mark up...and if I was a school I could not justify this ...

NCS run a 3 week program for £50 for the three weeks - one week at a similar site to PGL, one week at a Uni and one week voluntary ...sponsored by the Government... Food and activties included...I would actually say that a year trip is JUST as beneficial.

I do think these trips are important but I would not be comfortable asking a family whose means were tight to pay £300 above the actual cost to boost a companies profit.

I have run numerous events on a not for profit basis at Kingswood and other activity centres for a fraction of the price because unless I feel its a fair price then I wont book the trip...I know all about the admin special needs, medical needs and dietary needs etc ...I may not have run a trip for over 100 but I have run a trip for 86 and I have dealt with all the admin (which to be honest isnt that great because these centres have standard paperwork and systems)....that also involves collecting deposits and balances and also providing info so DBS checks can be undertaken.

Just to give a further prospective on price I have just returned from a 10 day cruise (food all included and so was entertainment) for £500pp.

NCS costs the government about £1,900 per participant. There is currently no proof of any benefit at all accruing to anyone...

And as for supporting the greater good - the consensus among many families at my DD’s school was that a week at Kingswood in Ashford was a week in a prison camp. It didn’t have positive effects on the DC other than, possibly, resilience in the face of hardship.

Where on earth can you get 5 days away from home on a residential visit for £130? I love your staffing costs!!!! I bet you would like everyone to volunteer or be on minimal wages just so you get a saving? As a society we cannot have it all ways. Employess of PGL deserve to be paid decent wages. The coach firms taking the children to activities are not charities. They have wages and costs to pay to keep their fleet on the road. I am very fed up of people moaning and groaning about these trips when everyone concerned is trying to do their best for the children.

The message really has to be that children benefit from these trips. Schools should be aware of their parent body and put on appropriate trips to include as many as possible. Schools should be supported and not continually criticised for doing the right thing.

Maybe the children should all go on a cruise then? Obviously these prices are loss leader prices or cabins they cannot fill! The economic reality is that they cannot do a weeks cruise for £500. You also presumably had to fly to ship or get to the port, so what was the real cost?

All holiday companies are businesses. A few might be charities but with the costs involved, this is very difficult. With good management companies employ people and pay taxes so we all benefit. This pays for education and everything else we want. If parents continually think these holidays are a rip off, then they close and jobs are lost. Let the majority of chidren go and enjoy the trips. At our school we have no negative feedback at all!

The facilities at Ashford are quite good - I have used that centre several times.(it used to be a Police training academy). It probably has the best non natural high ropes course at any centre... accommodation isnt bad most of the rooms are now ensuite with a chill out room for teaching staff etc tea/coffee/fridge etc...but we found that the meals were too small for kids that were burning up lots of energy...

I actually think these activity centres are very good but they are overcharging schools ....

The staffing costs are per person ...there are in the region of 15 kids in an activity group ...Kingswood employ mainly YOUNG people on a minimum wage so (£60 per day probably less if they include food and maybe accommodation for some) 15 x £20 = £300 for 5 days..even if the staffing costs were double then its still a massive mark up. The coach pricing was £1400 and given that most DC's would travel 2 hours each way I think that is more than fair pricing.

I think the activity trips are great...I just think the schools are ripped off because I have booked these trips for far less.

In terms of the cruise we travelled from Southampton so the only costs were petrol which was minimal .. you will be surprised how many cruises there are for under £450...we are going again next easter for the same price and that was an early booking price...although we have paid for flights at £98!

@Teenmum60 I think in this case its cost justification and PGL are making a huge margin out of an educational trip which cannot be right.
The actual base cost of that trip would be in the region of £130pp (£35 per head food,£40 accommodation,£20 towards employee costs and £25 coach and £10 cover for admin/insurance)....this is probably an over estimation if its a large cohort trip. Its over 300% mark up...and if I was a school I could not justify this ...

I take your point that if you can't afford then you can't afford it, but your 'base costs' are built on fantasy. The scout camp quoted up-thread with no buildings to maintain, no support staff, no professional activity instructors, no insurance to pay, no travel, no cleaners, no cooks, no water rates, no electricity bills, no booking system, no groundsmen, no handymen, no maintenance of equipment, no advertising etc came in at £175. Claiming a 300% mark-up is complete fantasy.

Indeed, the staff at Ashford are very young and not well educated.

I agree that the list of costs which concluded there was a 300% mark up was fantasy, but does show how limited people's awareness of the full range of costs involved in running a service, when everything has to be paid for, rather than being run by volunteers or a charity.

There is an element if competition in the school residential trips market. The idea that any firm could make 300% profit is laughable. Those firms know that school budgets are tight and there is competition and a maximum parents can and will pay. Yes, they have to include something for profit - all businesses need to do this or won't operate unless they are charities, but it won't be anywhere near the figures suggested and when we buy every other kind of product, we expect the supplier to make some profit too - people need to appreciate that supplying residential activities simply costs a lot of money. And it maybe that there are volunteers in Scouts offering similar activities for less money, but to expect businesses to be able to do it for the same just shows a lack of awareness.

There is a lot of work involved for schools running such trips, even when an external provider is used. Staff really must believe it makes a difference becaue otherwise why would they create more work, give up their evenings/weekends/holidays unpaid to supervise children 24/7 and deal with all the moaning before and after?

ChocolateWombat - Inspiring Learning (which owns Kingswood) is owned by Bridgepoint, a private equity fund. Private equity funds have been buying up businesses that operate in the rather grey area in between state education and private add ons. You can be fairly sure that they are all making one heck of a lot of money.

Can I just ask, who pays for the teachers or teaching assistants that goes with the kids?

@Teenmum60
The staffing costs are per person ...there are in the region of 15 kids in an activity group ...Kingswood employ mainly YOUNG people on a minimum wage so (£60 per day probably less if they include food and maybe accommodation for some) 15 x £20 = £300 for 5 days..even if the staffing costs were double then its still a massive mark up.
I'm going to have to hide this thread because it is making me irrationally frustrated. I know you are doing this to be deliberately provocative because no-one is that divorced from reality and I'm falling for it but for some reason I can't help it.
One instructor per 15 children on £60 per day =£ 300 for the week. Plus a cleaner, shall we say one per 15 as it isn't so much the dorms as the corridors and the offices and the kitchens and the toilets and the mess halls etc.? =£300. Plus a groundsman to cut the grass and paint the buildings and change the plugs and prune the trees and maybe maintain some of the kit but that does tend to be a specialist job: you can't get away with minimum wage for this one so shall we say £80 per day, £400 per week?
Now who will answer the phone and make the bookings and send out the invoices etc. lets hire an admin. Also not min wage so £400 per week.
If we presume that at any one time there will be more than 15 kids on site, you need to multiply up the activity leaders, the cleaners, the kitchen staff (forgot them earlier) and someone will need to supervise them and sort payroll etc.
Shall we pay a chef and a cleaning supervisor and a senior activities person who can sort the training for the activities and write the risk assessments and arrange that the equipment is regularly maintained? Shall we employ a wages clerk? At year end shall we employ an accountant??
The single minimum wage person you have budgeted for is so far below what is required to run a business. On top of all of those: you do know that an employee costs much more than the money they earn don't you? The employer has to pay NI and tax as well as the employee.

Anyhoo OP: I hope you find a way to deliver the holiday you want to.

GahWhatever - you are right that wage costs are going to be the main cost driver of an activity week. Wage costs are the main cost driver of schools, even without a boarding/residential element.

And the big question is whether covering those wage costs gives educational value for money? The parents/children ar our school definitely didn’t think so.