Schools should offer more exchange trips

[rollonthesummer]

says the BBC

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30084866

What do you think!?

On here, I've seen some really horrid threads where teachers have organised foreign trips- bearing in mind, the trip I organised last year which was for my own class and within the same county, took hours to organise- and parents have objected that the cost of the teacher's accomodation/travel (during a trip which has taken up a teacher's entire half term holiday) should be covered by the teacher themselves.

The way things are now, I can see parents complaining about spending £x and the child had to stay with a miserable family/didn't get nice food/wasn't with their friends AND they had to pay for the teacher to go, too. I can't see many teachers wanting to spend hours organising it for all the hassle it will cause.

Or am I being too negative (it's been known!)?

It is thE british council saying it, not the bbc.

Fair enough.

There's no way I'd want to organise an exchange. The amount of grief we get from, a few, parents over normal school trips and residentials means it's singularly unrewarding from that point of view. The children love it and benefit enormously from being involved but, my god, you genuinely wouldn't believe how thoughtless, ungrateful and self obsessed some parents can be toward the teachers who give up their own time to do it.

No, I would imagine it's a thankless task and you lay yourself wide open for a lot of work and criticism!

No way!
And in any case, if it is an exchange, remember you have to host the other school here too - can't begin to imagine the nightmare that would be.
People used to be less demanding, now it would drive you insane

No way. We're wondering about killing off our annual residential due to ungrateful and rude parents, and utterly ridiculous risk assessments. We don't have time to do the stuff we're paid for, let alone stuff we're not.

Exchanges aren't especially inclusive, either. They are dependent on the participating families having the space and the money to host another mouth to feed for a week, not to mention the expected days out over the weekend. Where I teach at least, it would be impossible for all but a very few comfortably-off families.

I believe the popular phrase on here that could be applied is "they can fuck off to fuck and then fuck off some more"

It just isn't worth the hassle.

I have run a number of exchanges which have, on the whole, proved very successful. They are cheaper than residential trips abroad would otuerwise be as there are no accommodation costs and as long as the family has space for a camp bed in their child's room anyone can participate. My school gives financial support to A level students and younger pupil premium students. It is very noticeable that a lot more students want to come from abroad to here than we can persuade to go from our school and that if there are going to be pupils who complain about something they will invariably be the British ones. It is also getting increasingly difficult to prepare all the necessary risk assessments, dbs checks etc.

Despite a few downsides I think the exchange experience gets pupils really using the language and involved in the culture of a country in a way no other residential trip can. I can't overstate how beneficial it has been for our students and they talk about the experience for years afterwards.

Are there any good private exchange companies if your school doesn't do them?

I bet a private company would make the whole cost of the trip rocket.

Not always megabucks - these people charge £90 for setting up the exchange, then you pay for the travel costs (and obviously have to host the exchange child). Just wondered if anyone on MN had used something like that.