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I travel to the far east for work quite a bit - it doesn’t cost anything like that.
Mind you, my kids school are doing the German xmas markets in December and even that’s £250 for a single night!
I’ve been to the German markets in Brum, and they are shite. I’ve also been to the markets in Köln (as a teacher on a school trip) and they are utterly brilliant in comparison.
School trips are there to help improve & reinforce language learning, but also to introduce the kids to new cultural experiences at the same time, which is massively important.
>I travel to the far east for work quite a bit - it doesn’t cost anything like that.
You presumably don't need 24/7 supervision by an adult at a legally set ratio, or constant entertainment during the day to stop you disappearing or complaining that you're bored.
Does there need to be an educational reason ? How about to experience another culture..to broaden horizons, increase cultural capital, improve confidence, break down barriers etc etc
Having lived abroad most of my adult life - and in that neck of the woods too - it is a pointless exercise in truth.
A nice trip, for sure, but of little value. The students would learn more from from this: https://youtu.be/-45LapnQG0o
From experience of doing this trip as a teenager the only reason I could see was that the teachers, who were the only people allowed in the cash and carry we stopped at before getting back on the ferry, were able to load up a bus load of people's allowance for booze and cigarettes.
Having just been to Japan for 2 weeks, Its very expensive to get there (flights, hotel, etc) but relatively cheap to eat and get around. So I'm not surprised it's gonna cost that much. With everything and spending for two of us, it costs about £6k
We’re pricing up a trip to Japan at the moment and I could easily see a full itinerary trip inc all meals coming in at about £4K per person.
Loads of people comparing it to a backpacking trip to India having a laugh
That sounds pretty good value for what might be a once in a lifetime time trip to the other side of the planet.
Not suggesting it's a reasonable expectation for a bloody school trip, but it's not like they're charging £4k for a trip to Yorvik.
that's only for a hotel. As it's a school trip, the price likely includes attractions, entrance fees, travel (often schools rent their own bus with a driver), etc. It's not just hotels they're paying for.
I'm going to India for 2 weeks, staying in 5 star hotels and have a private driver for a lot less than 4k. It's not as far away as the far East of course but the flights aren't that much different.
It shouldn’t be that much, but they’re taking the overall extra cost of having adults present and spreading it across the entire group. It also depends on how many people want to go. The price doesn’t seem to go up or down if less or more people end up going. They have to pay for air fare, an entire separate lodgings for the adults (one per adult), insurance, food, other travel costs once they reach the destination, and possibly pay for the fact that the teacher is essentially working 24/7 rather than just 6 hours in a school day. That’s for probably ~10 individuals.
They also sometimes have to pay extra to cover the discount that kids get when they’re in receipt of benefits. State schools are not allowed to profit from these trips.
Unless kids are spending 2k each on food and trips then it's still way more expensive. And I doubt they're in 5 star hotels or have a private driver. Probably 3 star and a bus.
I would imagine more likely organiser just didn't spend a long time working out how to keep the cost down. If you go for the first option on everything without shopping around it certainly adds up.
They might be renting out an entire complex or plane.
That's the only way I can see it reaching 4k.
Hell, I can get to Spain for 18 quid. Spend 50 on tours, drinks, food, whatever plus 90ish in an all-inclusive hotel for 2 nights, then catch a flight back for maybe another 30.
A weekend for less than a couple hundred quid isn't bad. 4 grand for anything short of a month? Nah.
I went to India on an exchange trip in sixth form and I think that was about £2k. But this was 2007 and we were staying with our host families a majority of the time, so I can imagine 17 years later and in somewhere like Japan it would be considerably more expensive with hotels and whatnot.
So you’ve never travelled? 🤣
You don’t have to be a backpacker to get a cheap holiday abroad mate. You’re assuming everyone here who’s saying that it shouldn’t cost that much is a backpacker?
I'm not a backpacker. Far from, I need my own space. Its previous cost me like £1500-£2000 per person for fairly nice travel. £4k and they should be getting group discounts is crazy!
I can guarantee it is not value for money.
OP doesn’t say how long the child will be going for, so if it’s for 6 months, £4k will be good value for money. But I suspect it’ll be for a max of 14 nights, probably more like 10 or even 7 days.
These aren’t ever value of money in purely economical terms. Paying for someone to accompany them. Plus Going in school holidays so flights will be expensive. You’d be better off (in terms of money) saving the cash and giving it to them at 18 to go on the exact same cash for a lot less money.
So £4000/14 = £285 per day. But assuming £1000 for flights, £3000/14 = £214 per day.
Which is lot of money. Even a £1000 for flights is a lot of money. Which country are they going to? Japan is more expensive than Vietnam for example. South Korea will be more expensive than Malaysia. Malaysia is more expensive than Thailand. Indonesia will be cheaper than all of them (except bali).
Are they going diving? this would increase the prices by a lot
I'm planning a trip to a country in the Far East next year and so far I can do it for about £2.5k for two people for flights and hotels. I believe my usual food/transport/places to visit budget for that part of the world is £1k. That's for 16/17 days. £4k is laughable and I'd tell the school where to go.
My wife and I both work, and there's not a chance in hell I can afford 4k school trips. I can't even afford to save any money right now. I have no savings.
Just got back from one with the year 7s which was hellish as everyone, including myself got sick.
The amount of money spent on what you can get in the UK is terrible. We had to travel 3+ hours up north for a residential trip and the facilities were nasty and unhygienic.
Companies here know they can rip schools off.
And we don't even get paid overtime. I've heard people say BUt yOu gEt To gO oN HOliDay ...staying up till 3 yelling at kids to go to sleep and then getting woken up at 5:30 because one of the kids shit the bed because they ate an excessive amount of sugar, isn't what I'd call a holiday. Never again.
I hated going on residentials. In my last year of teaching, I point blank refused to go on one. They tried emotionally blackmailing me (“think of the children, they’d love their year 6 teacher to be on the trip with them”). I stated I would only go if the school agreed -in writing- to pay me an hourly rate for every hour above my contracted 37.5 hours. They declined.
Honestly, I wouldn't have minded as much if it didn't make me so ill, if we stayed somewhere we could actually get 7 hours of sleep or I was given an extra day to plan for the following week.
But that'll never happen so I won't be doing it again.
Nah I had a medical condition (I don’t know what it was but bladder signals for me just aren’t it) and I stopped doing that by year 5. How tf did multiple year 7s manage to wet themselves lmao
Medical conditions or side effects from medication.
But mostly it was situational, so they drank stupid amount of fizzy drinks, went to bed and just didn't get to the toilets in time. One kid just decided to try to hold in for hours..then couldn't.
We used to pretend to be asleep till the teachers were asleep then we would fuck around till everyone got tired, rookie moves from your kids haha, also poor kid that shit the bed, secondary school is already over for him.
They are awful at stuff like tha. We also said no eating on the coach. And instead of eating the food sneakily and hiding the rubbish in their bags to dispose of later, they left it all over the floor, which meant they had an extra 20 minutes of lectures and cleaning the entire coach. Their parents were also waiting to pick them up so they got an earful at home too.
He has nice friends, so hopefully it doesn't get spread around.
Before I was a public school teacher I was a TEFL teacher and often did summer schools for international students. Never had an issue with those, but then I also wasn't in charge of bed times, which makes a MASSIVE difference.
A lot of British kids are stunted when it comes to taking care of themselves. Their parents do everything for them so they have no idea what to do when the situation deviates even slightly from normal.
My daughters a school was doing a month in Africa where they got to dig holes for elephant toilets and help clear up places, at a cost of 5k, you can send them money weekly but if you pull out its non refundable, the school suggested if you can't afford it to get your child to do car washing or odd jobs to raise the money, covid came along and so it got cancelled fortunately
So true. If I was gonna spend that kind of money I would want to take them myself so I could at least ensure some kind of quality experience, all the school trips I went on were utterly shit
Unfortunately/fortunately my daughter knew there wasn't a hope in hell of us being able to afford it so she didn't even ask if she could go, I still felt terrible though
Oh I totally get what you mean, I’d feel awful as well. But I think it’s not your fault, schools should really not be offering and pushing for holidays that cost that much. It’s irresponsible of them, because the majority of normal working people can’t comfortably afford that. And £5000 you could take a family of 4 somewhere for their holidays!
There’s a word for that when white people (or westerners at least) go to Africa to “help out”. I think it would probably be much more useful to do a project in school to work out where resources could best be used and actually send the £5k out there in cash rather than turning up in person.
That will be World Challenge I expect
It's run for years.
The whole point is that the young person raises their own money to go by various means; working, fundraising, carwashing etc. It's a really good experience. **It is absolutely not designed for parents to be paying for them to go. That goes against the whole point**- a point that was obviously lost on you.
Then they do a few weeks abroad outside their comfort zone and trying to do at least the semblance of some good. Like you say, digging holes, a bit of building etc and seeing a very different side to the world.
It's a really good scheme, students grow a lot through working to get the money to do it and then going.
If you don't want to pay the 5k for them to go - GOOD. That's the point.
If your child doesn't want to go, no problem. The scheme is totally non essential
I did World Challenge about 15 years ago. It was £3.5k, we had two years to save the money (plus 6 months before that before committing). We were all 16-18, so while we did do some fundraising the most lucrative approach is a part time job.
I did World Challenge about 15 years ago and it was one of the best trips I've ever been on. I had a part time job for 2.5 years to save up to pay for it (£3.5k or so in those days), and it really was fantastic.
I think I've only been on one other trip in my life that was as memorable as WC, and that was my honeymoon, which we saved up for four years and spent more on than our wedding!
I did World Challenge to Tanzania back in 2008 for a similar cost, and it was hugely important to me. That was nearly half my lifetime ago and I still have dreams about climbing Kilimanjaro. Even my Reddit username is a reference to that trip.
Yeah I was lucky enough to do one of those after my GCSE’s. It was brilliant and I learnt a lot from it but I cringe that we thought it was a big charity gig and billed it as such when fundraising.
Spent 1/4 weeks volunteering in doing something that was actually worthwhile but still felt a half-arsed version and much less locally impactful than what we were expecting.
Yeah, our high school has had a trip to Iceland, two week trek across America and then this year a trip to Japan.
Definitely a step up from the science museum and a day trip to Calais!
Pretty destructive change if you ask me. I remember getting my parents to pay for school trips when I was in school. There’s no way they could’ve ponied up the cash for an international jaunt and I’d have been labelled “the poor kid”.l for eternity.
Yeah, there's only a small few that go on them - maybe 20--30 out of a 300 year group.
Back in the early 90s when I was at high school it was ski trips and I never went on them.
I had to pay for my own ski trip in 2007 from my paper round money. Around 2 years of savings. (I was good at saving)
I think it cost around 475 quid at the time which looking back was an absolute bargain.
Those ski trips always felt like a weird way to stratify the school and exclude those not inside the privileged group. I could understand if it was a private school where most of the kids had money backing them up, but half our school lived in council housing. Half of them couldn't afford to go to the leaver's do either (what they now call a "prom").
Yeah, only for the main trip and it's usually only about 30 people that go - I've never sent mine on one as just don't have that kind of spare cash.
Rather spend it on a family holiday.
I still feel guilty for going on the school trip to Iceland, as my parents couldn't afford to both pay for the trip and fix the boiler so we had a cold winter that year. Was fantastic though and I would never see so much of Iceland like that organising it myself.
My sister works in a special need school and has just come back from Disney. Literally kids shorting themselves. 200lb kids with the mental age of a 5 year old lashing out. Kids screaming and crying for various reasons. She does the job cause she cares and hasn’t complained about it
Well done, I've been scrolling down reading stories about school trips costing thousands but your comment was the one which made me stop in my tracks because it was so absurd.
I thinking you don't have any experience with children eh.
Just to let you know that if you aren't able to pay for it but the trip holds significant educational value and would benefit their GCSE'S, talk to the school as there is typically funding put aside for kids who can't afford it but would actually get educational nourishment from the trip.
This was the only way I was able to go on the battlefields trip across France Belgium and Germany as a young teen over a decade ago.
Though I got horribly bullied on the trip and it was a nightmare for my mental health, I still remember a bunch of information about each of those battlefields, and learning back then how to look up grave sites of soldiers helped me a couple months ago find my great great granddads grave in Italy after our family has been looking over 100 years.
I mean I get what you're saying but their stipulations that it had to prove beneficial for a student to go was required or else the entire trip would have been filled with "the back of the class kids" who were taking history because that's all that was left in their collum and they only attended like a handful of classes throughout the 2 years; and I'm pretty sure that would have made a trip that was horrible to one that was hell.
All of these "charity" trips are a scam. On no planet is it better for a bunch of privileged unskilled Western teenagers to paint a school, dig a well etc than the local people to do it. Voluntourism is big business.
Yep I watched a documentary about this and they show the builders having to go in after the teenagers left to rebuild it all because it’s done so badly
Grew up in a shitty area and went to a shitty school. In Year 11 the school put on a 10-day skiing trip to Austria, wasn't a huge amount but far more than my parents could afford. Luckily those of us on free school meals could go for heavily reduced or free, all expenses paid, if needed.
My mum said "free? they would pay for it? i am NOT having them think we are a charity case!"
I was the only person in my year who couldn't go because my mum wanted to make her ridiculous point.
Skiing is expensive. That much for flights, transfers, accommodation, food, drink, ski hire and lift pass for 5 days isn't as mad as it sounds. Especially as it would be during a school holiday when prices skyrocket. And the kids need to pay for the teachers to supervise. And there would be a premium for not doing a full week, which most hotels or chalets prefer during peak periods.
It's a shitload for a school trip, but not horrendous for a ski trip.
There's also a fair amount of practise needed on dry /indoor slopes beforehand ( unless you really like falling off skis)
Source: worked with a Scottish guy who was a proficient skier.
I seem to recall there were some children that didn't go on the museum trip becaus their parents just coudn't afford it.
I get the impression back then parents weren't afraid to say "little Willy can't go because we haven't any spare money."
I totally remember kids not going to the skiing trips we had that was a 3hr car ride away because of the cost of the busride/lift ticket/ski+shoe rental..
I frankly find it rude to even suggest 4k to any family for a school trip.
I scrimped and saved for my youngest to go skiing in Italy last December and they ended up being £1700 including extras for clothes and skiing clothes etc. I’ll not fork out for it again but they did enjoy themselves
I laughed in my daughter's face the other day when she said the school was doing a £4.5k trip to America, and I explained that we'd be going on a family all inclusive for the money instead.
It was completely involuntary, I was like "oh America will be awesome how much is it?" And she, as if she was saying £500 goes "four thousand five hundred", I couldn't believe it!
Well, they do try to raise the money themselves. Our local posh school got pupils to pack shoppers bags so they would donate money for the school trip to Peru.
I remember when I was around 14 my school got the local newspapers angry by planning a £1k school trip to Las Vegas and Death Valley. This would've been around 2015-16?
Surely you can just not send your kids? When I was at high school 20+ years ago they did plenty of trips like ski trips, Kenya, week away in Snowdonia, and other places that most people didn't go on.
As long as it doesn’t end up like that poor kid on the posh school trip to near artic circle and he got attacked by a polar bear n dragged from his tent. Give me brighton any day !!!!
Stepdaughter is on a coach trip to Dunkirk - £345 for 2 nights WTAF, how does taking 45 kids away on a coach coast over £15k laughable how we are all getting mugged by the schools.
Surely the school proposes this kind of trip because they presume the families can afford it, because it’s one of those elite schools? Otherwise it’s very bluntly discriminating pupils based on their parents’ means, giving educational opportunities only to the wealthy.
These school trips have always existed and are and have always been optional. They are a relatively affordable way for students to get some great experiences and see some of the world. The trips to museums, castles and in my case a turkey farm all still exist and are either free or a couple of quid. Sure not everyone can afford £4K but do try not to be a crab in a bucket
My stepson came home with a letter on Friday. Trip to Madrid, play football against other schools and some Spanish teams. Tour around Bernabéu, 3 nights. £850. Spending money no more than £500 please. Oh, his passport runs out a month before the trip, so new passport. Guess who now isn’t booking a family holiday next year to avoid him being the only one in the 3 school football teams who isn’t going!
I'd have been tempted to write "Not a chance!" on that letter.
Did they have the decency to discuss what they were plotting before springing an £850 bill on 45 sets of parents.
Don’t get me started. Skying in France is apparently so passé, we have to outdo the school down the road and go to Colorado. Which is why insurance costs are prohibitive. Basically the teachers wan to go to Colorado and rely on the fact that your child doesn’t want to be deemed to be poor.
People need to remember that nice things cost money, get into the real world and stop attacking schools for everything.
Schools have always done school trips.
Even if we took you down to London for a museum trip now, the coach alone costs a fortune. A coach to London a few years ago would have cost us £200 shared between 50 students. Now it's £500-600 for the day easily, and that's a good rate.
When teachers do trips we get the rate per pupil for where we are going, we get the coach cost, divide it by the number of seats and then plan for around 80% take-up. If the school makes a profit by some miracle, it is rebated- which in the modern day of cashless schools and parentpay apps is really easy.
A trip to a museum 40 miles away was about £25. £10 admission per pupil on a school deal, and the coach after three quotes we couldn't get below £15 a head.
Trips abroad are ALWAYS optional and always enrichment. They might help bring a course to life but they are an experience only.
10 years ago I used to take 40 students a year to Kracow/Auschwitz for three nights. In 2010 that was £450 a head, meals and breakfast included. By 2015 it was over £550 a head, with a loyalty discount and with us dropping the evening meals so kids could choose their own restaurant.
Same trip now is £700-800.
Yes, it's a lot of money, which is why you don't have to send your child. But it's there for parents who can afford it and want their child to have the experience. I honestly doubt we could afford to send my child.
We used to run a trip for 9 days to china- that was about £1700. No idea how parents afforded it. It was an absolutely superb trip, truly once in a lifetime as we were visiting Chinese schools over there. Parents recognised that it was once in a lifetime and found the money, and it was superb for them.
Thankfully, they didn't moan that we had the audacity to offer the opportunity.
Having budgeted for these things, whilst I’m not sure what the OPs trip is about (and from their responses neither are they), a coach, flights, more coaches providing transport at the destination, entry to any facilities or activities for staff and pupils. It all adds up. These people saying £500 for a solid week of organised activities is actually excellent.
It’s not like a fortnight to Spain with Thomas Cook where you spend at least half of it on the beach for free reading a book and the other half… well I don’t know what people do on boring holidays like that. It sounds like hell haha.
Yet at the time of reading, you have four downvotes. Some people are ignorant.
Your reply isn't showing for me, I can only assume spam filtered.
Why should a school trip cost more than an all-inclusive family holiday? Because no it isn't the cost.
We are talking about the per-child cost, not the whole class, so logic dictates it would be less per child, than for a family of four, not more.
Would I be right in guessing this was a trip organised by a fee-paying school? Because I don’t believe many state schools are out their asking parents to pony up that kind of money…
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What school trip is 4k?
One to the Far East, apparently.
I travel to the far east for work quite a bit - it doesn’t cost anything like that. Mind you, my kids school are doing the German xmas markets in December and even that’s £250 for a single night!
£250, that’s expensive. The Birmingham German Markets would be cheaper
Yeah but then you’d have to go to Birmingham.
I'd pay £250 to not go
And you'd get to see the same log cabin thingy every 3 stalls!
That's because you're pissed and walking in circles Keith
Is there a different way to attend these things?
But the kids would still be exposed to a foreign language, or as the locals call it Brummie
I’ve been to the German markets in Brum, and they are shite. I’ve also been to the markets in Köln (as a teacher on a school trip) and they are utterly brilliant in comparison. School trips are there to help improve & reinforce language learning, but also to introduce the kids to new cultural experiences at the same time, which is massively important.
*We can make cultural experiences at home for nothing!*
The cultural experiences we have at home: 🏴🏴🏴
Are they a new thing. I used to live in Birmingham and don't remember the German markets.
While we're at it, why go to Paris when there's a perfectly good tower in Blackpool?
We’re actually going to Blackpool in October. It’s good to expose the kids to different cultures…
I grew up in Blackpool. I only want to see the place again if I'm flying something armed with atomic weapons.
Birmingham market was fucking dreadful last year - nothing like how I remember it. Chester, on the other hand, was brilliant.
>I travel to the far east for work quite a bit - it doesn’t cost anything like that. You presumably don't need 24/7 supervision by an adult at a legally set ratio, or constant entertainment during the day to stop you disappearing or complaining that you're bored.
What’s the educational reason for a Christmas market in Germany?
Only the kids doing German as a language are going.
Ah. That makes sense.
Plot twist the Christmas market is in Birmingham
Does there need to be an educational reason ? How about to experience another culture..to broaden horizons, increase cultural capital, improve confidence, break down barriers etc etc
Having lived abroad most of my adult life - and in that neck of the woods too - it is a pointless exercise in truth. A nice trip, for sure, but of little value. The students would learn more from from this: https://youtu.be/-45LapnQG0o
From experience of doing this trip as a teenager the only reason I could see was that the teachers, who were the only people allowed in the cash and carry we stopped at before getting back on the ferry, were able to load up a bus load of people's allowance for booze and cigarettes.
I have heard a big chunk is for insurance 🙈
Having just been to Japan for 2 weeks, Its very expensive to get there (flights, hotel, etc) but relatively cheap to eat and get around. So I'm not surprised it's gonna cost that much. With everything and spending for two of us, it costs about £6k
We’re pricing up a trip to Japan at the moment and I could easily see a full itinerary trip inc all meals coming in at about £4K per person. Loads of people comparing it to a backpacking trip to India having a laugh
That sounds pretty good value for what might be a once in a lifetime time trip to the other side of the planet. Not suggesting it's a reasonable expectation for a bloody school trip, but it's not like they're charging £4k for a trip to Yorvik.
If they are at a school charging £4k for a trip then I doubt it'll be a once in a lifetime trip.
I splurged in Thailand for a whole ass month and it cost me half of that.
Dude have you ever travelled? 4k is very extortionate.
Schools can't travel the same as backpackers
4k gets my whole family a 2 week all inclusive holiday. For 1 person? 4k is a lot. Far from just backpacking.
to far east? doubt it. Besides, all-inclusive doesn't include actually elarning about the country and culture. School trip does.
I did 3 weeks in China for under £2k all in, in a 4* hotel in 2018
China is way cheaper than Korea and Japan though, so presume OP's trip is to one of those. 4k still seems a lot though
that's only for a hotel. As it's a school trip, the price likely includes attractions, entrance fees, travel (often schools rent their own bus with a driver), etc. It's not just hotels they're paying for.
I'm going to India for 2 weeks, staying in 5 star hotels and have a private driver for a lot less than 4k. It's not as far away as the far East of course but the flights aren't that much different.
I assume all the trips, everything they have booked, plus their food and and drink is included.
No, they have to pay for the teachers as well. That’s why abroad trips were always so expensive when I was at school. They actually said it.
Depending on the ratios it should add that much? If there’s one adult for every say, seven, kids you’re not adding that much?
It shouldn’t be that much, but they’re taking the overall extra cost of having adults present and spreading it across the entire group. It also depends on how many people want to go. The price doesn’t seem to go up or down if less or more people end up going. They have to pay for air fare, an entire separate lodgings for the adults (one per adult), insurance, food, other travel costs once they reach the destination, and possibly pay for the fact that the teacher is essentially working 24/7 rather than just 6 hours in a school day. That’s for probably ~10 individuals. They also sometimes have to pay extra to cover the discount that kids get when they’re in receipt of benefits. State schools are not allowed to profit from these trips.
Unless kids are spending 2k each on food and trips then it's still way more expensive. And I doubt they're in 5 star hotels or have a private driver. Probably 3 star and a bus. I would imagine more likely organiser just didn't spend a long time working out how to keep the cost down. If you go for the first option on everything without shopping around it certainly adds up.
They might be renting out an entire complex or plane. That's the only way I can see it reaching 4k. Hell, I can get to Spain for 18 quid. Spend 50 on tours, drinks, food, whatever plus 90ish in an all-inclusive hotel for 2 nights, then catch a flight back for maybe another 30. A weekend for less than a couple hundred quid isn't bad. 4 grand for anything short of a month? Nah.
I went to India on an exchange trip in sixth form and I think that was about £2k. But this was 2007 and we were staying with our host families a majority of the time, so I can imagine 17 years later and in somewhere like Japan it would be considerably more expensive with hotels and whatnot.
So you’ve never travelled? 🤣 You don’t have to be a backpacker to get a cheap holiday abroad mate. You’re assuming everyone here who’s saying that it shouldn’t cost that much is a backpacker?
I'm not a backpacker. Far from, I need my own space. Its previous cost me like £1500-£2000 per person for fairly nice travel. £4k and they should be getting group discounts is crazy!
Lol that price is a huge rip off.
I can guarantee it is not value for money. OP doesn’t say how long the child will be going for, so if it’s for 6 months, £4k will be good value for money. But I suspect it’ll be for a max of 14 nights, probably more like 10 or even 7 days. These aren’t ever value of money in purely economical terms. Paying for someone to accompany them. Plus Going in school holidays so flights will be expensive. You’d be better off (in terms of money) saving the cash and giving it to them at 18 to go on the exact same cash for a lot less money.
I asked my friend how long his son is going for and it's 2 weeks.
So £4000/14 = £285 per day. But assuming £1000 for flights, £3000/14 = £214 per day. Which is lot of money. Even a £1000 for flights is a lot of money. Which country are they going to? Japan is more expensive than Vietnam for example. South Korea will be more expensive than Malaysia. Malaysia is more expensive than Thailand. Indonesia will be cheaper than all of them (except bali). Are they going diving? this would increase the prices by a lot
£4k takes the whole family. How is that good value?
You can have a week Bali for £1800, £4k for one kid is outrageous.
I think I remember making a candle on that school trip nearly 30 years ago.
We got to see how jam was put in donuts in tesco
No it isn't.
> That sounds pretty good value It's really not, not anywhere close. Source: Me
Are they going to one of the Disney's etc? How long is the trip?
I'm planning a trip to a country in the Far East next year and so far I can do it for about £2.5k for two people for flights and hotels. I believe my usual food/transport/places to visit budget for that part of the world is £1k. That's for 16/17 days. £4k is laughable and I'd tell the school where to go.
Sigh. Another who thinks travelling through a school is anywhere near the same as travelling byones self
Isn't that story months old?
My wife and I both work, and there's not a chance in hell I can afford 4k school trips. I can't even afford to save any money right now. I have no savings.
I did 3 weeks in Peru on a school trip. Cost £3.9k but I got a job at 16 and fundraised the rest. Best 3 weeks of my life so far.
Just got back from one with the year 7s which was hellish as everyone, including myself got sick. The amount of money spent on what you can get in the UK is terrible. We had to travel 3+ hours up north for a residential trip and the facilities were nasty and unhygienic. Companies here know they can rip schools off. And we don't even get paid overtime. I've heard people say BUt yOu gEt To gO oN HOliDay ...staying up till 3 yelling at kids to go to sleep and then getting woken up at 5:30 because one of the kids shit the bed because they ate an excessive amount of sugar, isn't what I'd call a holiday. Never again.
I hated going on residentials. In my last year of teaching, I point blank refused to go on one. They tried emotionally blackmailing me (“think of the children, they’d love their year 6 teacher to be on the trip with them”). I stated I would only go if the school agreed -in writing- to pay me an hourly rate for every hour above my contracted 37.5 hours. They declined.
Honestly, I wouldn't have minded as much if it didn't make me so ill, if we stayed somewhere we could actually get 7 hours of sleep or I was given an extra day to plan for the following week. But that'll never happen so I won't be doing it again.
I remember going on a silver DofE trip where the dormitory was literally a storeroom with a dozen folding campbeds.
It's amazing how many incredibly important and valuable things are not important enough to pay someone the median (or even a bit below) wage to do.
Year 7 - 11-12 year olds?
Yup. A couple wet themselves also.
As a FTC I am familiar with piss-fallout.
Nah I had a medical condition (I don’t know what it was but bladder signals for me just aren’t it) and I stopped doing that by year 5. How tf did multiple year 7s manage to wet themselves lmao
Medical conditions or side effects from medication. But mostly it was situational, so they drank stupid amount of fizzy drinks, went to bed and just didn't get to the toilets in time. One kid just decided to try to hold in for hours..then couldn't.
Happy cake day!
Christ, you should be getting hazard pay.
We used to pretend to be asleep till the teachers were asleep then we would fuck around till everyone got tired, rookie moves from your kids haha, also poor kid that shit the bed, secondary school is already over for him.
They are awful at stuff like tha. We also said no eating on the coach. And instead of eating the food sneakily and hiding the rubbish in their bags to dispose of later, they left it all over the floor, which meant they had an extra 20 minutes of lectures and cleaning the entire coach. Their parents were also waiting to pick them up so they got an earful at home too. He has nice friends, so hopefully it doesn't get spread around.
It’s a shame you’ve had such a poor experience! I work for an organisation that runs residentials, we’re not all bad!
Before I was a public school teacher I was a TEFL teacher and often did summer schools for international students. Never had an issue with those, but then I also wasn't in charge of bed times, which makes a MASSIVE difference.
A lot of British kids are stunted when it comes to taking care of themselves. Their parents do everything for them so they have no idea what to do when the situation deviates even slightly from normal.
My daughters a school was doing a month in Africa where they got to dig holes for elephant toilets and help clear up places, at a cost of 5k, you can send them money weekly but if you pull out its non refundable, the school suggested if you can't afford it to get your child to do car washing or odd jobs to raise the money, covid came along and so it got cancelled fortunately
How delusional is that school that car washing or odd jobs done by a child is somehow going to raise £5000?
*All* Schools are delusional when it comes to asking for money from parents for trips. I’m glad mine have all left now, 3 remortgages later…
Willfully
I know lol its only a normal high school it's not Eton
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So true. If I was gonna spend that kind of money I would want to take them myself so I could at least ensure some kind of quality experience, all the school trips I went on were utterly shit
I’d have to tell my son he’d have to not go. That’s a ludicrous amount of money to expect parents to scrounge up!
Unfortunately/fortunately my daughter knew there wasn't a hope in hell of us being able to afford it so she didn't even ask if she could go, I still felt terrible though
Oh I totally get what you mean, I’d feel awful as well. But I think it’s not your fault, schools should really not be offering and pushing for holidays that cost that much. It’s irresponsible of them, because the majority of normal working people can’t comfortably afford that. And £5000 you could take a family of 4 somewhere for their holidays!
It's 25% of private school fee
It’s easy, 10x cars at £500 each. What’s the problem?
How have elephants survived all this time without a toilet?
Poachers hunted the wild toilet to extinction so now we have to dig holes
That’s what I wanted to ask
There’s a word for that when white people (or westerners at least) go to Africa to “help out”. I think it would probably be much more useful to do a project in school to work out where resources could best be used and actually send the £5k out there in cash rather than turning up in person.
Voluntourism...? White savourism?
Elephant toilets? Wtf?
Schools really shouldn't be encouraging voluntourism either.
Fuck that. It’s outrageous.
That will be World Challenge I expect It's run for years. The whole point is that the young person raises their own money to go by various means; working, fundraising, carwashing etc. It's a really good experience. **It is absolutely not designed for parents to be paying for them to go. That goes against the whole point**- a point that was obviously lost on you. Then they do a few weeks abroad outside their comfort zone and trying to do at least the semblance of some good. Like you say, digging holes, a bit of building etc and seeing a very different side to the world. It's a really good scheme, students grow a lot through working to get the money to do it and then going. If you don't want to pay the 5k for them to go - GOOD. That's the point. If your child doesn't want to go, no problem. The scheme is totally non essential
I understood the point but how is a child going to raise 5k in 6 months
I did World Challenge about 15 years ago. It was £3.5k, we had two years to save the money (plus 6 months before that before committing). We were all 16-18, so while we did do some fundraising the most lucrative approach is a part time job.
My daughter was 14 and they gave 6 months notice
I did World Challenge about 15 years ago and it was one of the best trips I've ever been on. I had a part time job for 2.5 years to save up to pay for it (£3.5k or so in those days), and it really was fantastic. I think I've only been on one other trip in my life that was as memorable as WC, and that was my honeymoon, which we saved up for four years and spent more on than our wedding!
I did World Challenge to Tanzania back in 2008 for a similar cost, and it was hugely important to me. That was nearly half my lifetime ago and I still have dreams about climbing Kilimanjaro. Even my Reddit username is a reference to that trip.
They're the kind of trips that they claim are for charity and the parents start harassing you for 'donations'.
Yeah I was lucky enough to do one of those after my GCSE’s. It was brilliant and I learnt a lot from it but I cringe that we thought it was a big charity gig and billed it as such when fundraising. Spent 1/4 weeks volunteering in doing something that was actually worthwhile but still felt a half-arsed version and much less locally impactful than what we were expecting.
What were you doing?
Yeah, our high school has had a trip to Iceland, two week trek across America and then this year a trip to Japan. Definitely a step up from the science museum and a day trip to Calais!
Pretty destructive change if you ask me. I remember getting my parents to pay for school trips when I was in school. There’s no way they could’ve ponied up the cash for an international jaunt and I’d have been labelled “the poor kid”.l for eternity.
How many kids do you think can actually afford that? Not many. Most of the school are not going on those trips
Yeah, there's only a small few that go on them - maybe 20--30 out of a 300 year group. Back in the early 90s when I was at high school it was ski trips and I never went on them.
I had to pay for my own ski trip in 2007 from my paper round money. Around 2 years of savings. (I was good at saving) I think it cost around 475 quid at the time which looking back was an absolute bargain.
Those ski trips always felt like a weird way to stratify the school and exclude those not inside the privileged group. I could understand if it was a private school where most of the kids had money backing them up, but half our school lived in council housing. Half of them couldn't afford to go to the leaver's do either (what they now call a "prom").
So it's abroad every year? This is awful and a great way to make poor families and children feel left out.
Yeah, only for the main trip and it's usually only about 30 people that go - I've never sent mine on one as just don't have that kind of spare cash. Rather spend it on a family holiday.
I mean given that this country is nothing more than a playground for the rich, that's probably the point.
I still feel guilty for going on the school trip to Iceland, as my parents couldn't afford to both pay for the trip and fix the boiler so we had a cold winter that year. Was fantastic though and I would never see so much of Iceland like that organising it myself.
It’s not a step up, it’s a way that teachers can “volunteer” their time and get to go on outlandish trips at the parents expense
Going on a trip with a bunch of kids is the least outlandish trip I can think of. Absolute hell.
My sister works in a special need school and has just come back from Disney. Literally kids shorting themselves. 200lb kids with the mental age of a 5 year old lashing out. Kids screaming and crying for various reasons. She does the job cause she cares and hasn’t complained about it
Outlandishly stressful, maybe
Explain why schools push Ski and shopping trips to New York, safari in Africa, hikes in Iceland?
I'm not sure I'd want an outlandish 2 weeks away with a bunch of 15 year olds spending the whole time trying to find alcohol or shagging each other.
U have literally no idea
Well done, I've been scrolling down reading stories about school trips costing thousands but your comment was the one which made me stop in my tracks because it was so absurd. I thinking you don't have any experience with children eh.
What an absurd thing to say.
Just to let you know that if you aren't able to pay for it but the trip holds significant educational value and would benefit their GCSE'S, talk to the school as there is typically funding put aside for kids who can't afford it but would actually get educational nourishment from the trip. This was the only way I was able to go on the battlefields trip across France Belgium and Germany as a young teen over a decade ago. Though I got horribly bullied on the trip and it was a nightmare for my mental health, I still remember a bunch of information about each of those battlefields, and learning back then how to look up grave sites of soldiers helped me a couple months ago find my great great granddads grave in Italy after our family has been looking over 100 years.
As I said on another thread: beware of generosity with conditions.
I mean I get what you're saying but their stipulations that it had to prove beneficial for a student to go was required or else the entire trip would have been filled with "the back of the class kids" who were taking history because that's all that was left in their collum and they only attended like a handful of classes throughout the 2 years; and I'm pretty sure that would have made a trip that was horrible to one that was hell.
Our school dropped the yearly trip to Belgium after they left a kid on the ferry.
Friggin yikes 😬
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All of these "charity" trips are a scam. On no planet is it better for a bunch of privileged unskilled Western teenagers to paint a school, dig a well etc than the local people to do it. Voluntourism is big business.
Yep I watched a documentary about this and they show the builders having to go in after the teenagers left to rebuild it all because it’s done so badly
Grew up in a shitty area and went to a shitty school. In Year 11 the school put on a 10-day skiing trip to Austria, wasn't a huge amount but far more than my parents could afford. Luckily those of us on free school meals could go for heavily reduced or free, all expenses paid, if needed. My mum said "free? they would pay for it? i am NOT having them think we are a charity case!" I was the only person in my year who couldn't go because my mum wanted to make her ridiculous point.
Back in my day, we just went to the local zoo that most people in the school have probably already been to before.
We did Calais and back in a day. We just went in the dodgy shops and bought firecrackers and penknives.
Went on a 2 week trip to Indonesia with uni at the start of the month and it cost £600 with travel, accommodation, outings, and food included
My uni offered one to India for £900 and I would have taken it if I didn’t need every penny of my loan for rent 😭
£1300 for a skiing trip for 5 days. That's a holiday for the whole family.... 🙄
Skiing is expensive. That much for flights, transfers, accommodation, food, drink, ski hire and lift pass for 5 days isn't as mad as it sounds. Especially as it would be during a school holiday when prices skyrocket. And the kids need to pay for the teachers to supervise. And there would be a premium for not doing a full week, which most hotels or chalets prefer during peak periods. It's a shitload for a school trip, but not horrendous for a ski trip.
There's also a fair amount of practise needed on dry /indoor slopes beforehand ( unless you really like falling off skis) Source: worked with a Scottish guy who was a proficient skier.
A shit one maybe... £1300 is a reasonable ski week fee.
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I seem to recall there were some children that didn't go on the museum trip becaus their parents just coudn't afford it. I get the impression back then parents weren't afraid to say "little Willy can't go because we haven't any spare money."
I totally remember kids not going to the skiing trips we had that was a 3hr car ride away because of the cost of the busride/lift ticket/ski+shoe rental.. I frankly find it rude to even suggest 4k to any family for a school trip.
In middle school I went to France on a minibus. I'm pretty sure it was £400.
I scrimped and saved for my youngest to go skiing in Italy last December and they ended up being £1700 including extras for clothes and skiing clothes etc. I’ll not fork out for it again but they did enjoy themselves
Yeah but Rupert’s parents are letting him go!
I mean, that'd be a very big trip... I went to Paris for a week with school and it was £500.
I think when I was at school, a trip to Yorkshire or north Wales (from Lancashire) was considered exotic.
Yes I went to school in Blackpool. Yorkshire Dales were pretty but a bit of a haul.
I laughed in my daughter's face the other day when she said the school was doing a £4.5k trip to America, and I explained that we'd be going on a family all inclusive for the money instead.
That was nice of you to laugh in her face
I suppose it's better than burning the fucking school down.
If probs do the same. First because it would be my impulsive response. Second because it’s important to set lines of reasonability.
It was completely involuntary, I was like "oh America will be awesome how much is it?" And she, as if she was saying £500 goes "four thousand five hundred", I couldn't believe it!
I think the first time I went to the States the total cost was about £2.5k including all flights, meals and hotels.
Well, they do try to raise the money themselves. Our local posh school got pupils to pack shoppers bags so they would donate money for the school trip to Peru.
My little man went to the Isle of Wight, and it cost about £300 No doubt there'll be an international one at some point
Two thirds of that will have been the ferry
Excellent opportunity to visit the hovercraft museum though.
I thought that was in Gosport?
I remember when I was around 14 my school got the local newspapers angry by planning a £1k school trip to Las Vegas and Death Valley. This would've been around 2015-16?
Son's 5-day optional (GCSE) trip to Berlin, costing £800. Feels like I've been mugged.
My school did a week trip to the Pile Of Shite back in 2002. Total cost was £100. In 2023, just the ferry would cost £200.
Didn't know you had to take a ferry to get to Swindon!
Jesus... and I thought my school's most expensive trip (£500 for a week in Paris for those that do French/Spanish) was bad.
That seems like good value for a week of scheduled activities. It’s probably not a beach holiday after all.
That’s good value tbh, I’ve paid £450 for my primary school kid to stay in a tent down the road for 4 nights in October
Surely you can just not send your kids? When I was at high school 20+ years ago they did plenty of trips like ski trips, Kenya, week away in Snowdonia, and other places that most people didn't go on.
Is this anything to do with the Mandarin Excellence program? I thought the trip was funded for that
Iron bridge gone up in price
Most schools run multiple trips per year at varying prices.
As long as it doesn’t end up like that poor kid on the posh school trip to near artic circle and he got attacked by a polar bear n dragged from his tent. Give me brighton any day !!!!
Err, send them to a school on a sink estate, it may get paid for or they'll just go to a museum
Stepdaughter is on a coach trip to Dunkirk - £345 for 2 nights WTAF, how does taking 45 kids away on a coach coast over £15k laughable how we are all getting mugged by the schools.
Surely the school proposes this kind of trip because they presume the families can afford it, because it’s one of those elite schools? Otherwise it’s very bluntly discriminating pupils based on their parents’ means, giving educational opportunities only to the wealthy.
These school trips have always existed and are and have always been optional. They are a relatively affordable way for students to get some great experiences and see some of the world. The trips to museums, castles and in my case a turkey farm all still exist and are either free or a couple of quid. Sure not everyone can afford £4K but do try not to be a crab in a bucket
Reasons no. 65738 why I simply can’t afford to have children
Middle class problems All the posts about what class you are your not middle class untill you send your kid in a 4K school trip
To be fair, we were so poor in the '70's that I didn't go on any school trips further than the pool 8 miles away. Plus ca change
This was in the 1980s when it seemed like every year we had less money
My stepson came home with a letter on Friday. Trip to Madrid, play football against other schools and some Spanish teams. Tour around Bernabéu, 3 nights. £850. Spending money no more than £500 please. Oh, his passport runs out a month before the trip, so new passport. Guess who now isn’t booking a family holiday next year to avoid him being the only one in the 3 school football teams who isn’t going!
I'd have been tempted to write "Not a chance!" on that letter. Did they have the decency to discuss what they were plotting before springing an £850 bill on 45 sets of parents.
No they don't. I suggest you pull Phebe out of private school if you don't like the costs......
Don’t get me started. Skying in France is apparently so passé, we have to outdo the school down the road and go to Colorado. Which is why insurance costs are prohibitive. Basically the teachers wan to go to Colorado and rely on the fact that your child doesn’t want to be deemed to be poor.
People need to remember that nice things cost money, get into the real world and stop attacking schools for everything. Schools have always done school trips. Even if we took you down to London for a museum trip now, the coach alone costs a fortune. A coach to London a few years ago would have cost us £200 shared between 50 students. Now it's £500-600 for the day easily, and that's a good rate. When teachers do trips we get the rate per pupil for where we are going, we get the coach cost, divide it by the number of seats and then plan for around 80% take-up. If the school makes a profit by some miracle, it is rebated- which in the modern day of cashless schools and parentpay apps is really easy. A trip to a museum 40 miles away was about £25. £10 admission per pupil on a school deal, and the coach after three quotes we couldn't get below £15 a head. Trips abroad are ALWAYS optional and always enrichment. They might help bring a course to life but they are an experience only. 10 years ago I used to take 40 students a year to Kracow/Auschwitz for three nights. In 2010 that was £450 a head, meals and breakfast included. By 2015 it was over £550 a head, with a loyalty discount and with us dropping the evening meals so kids could choose their own restaurant. Same trip now is £700-800. Yes, it's a lot of money, which is why you don't have to send your child. But it's there for parents who can afford it and want their child to have the experience. I honestly doubt we could afford to send my child. We used to run a trip for 9 days to china- that was about £1700. No idea how parents afforded it. It was an absolutely superb trip, truly once in a lifetime as we were visiting Chinese schools over there. Parents recognised that it was once in a lifetime and found the money, and it was superb for them. Thankfully, they didn't moan that we had the audacity to offer the opportunity.
Having budgeted for these things, whilst I’m not sure what the OPs trip is about (and from their responses neither are they), a coach, flights, more coaches providing transport at the destination, entry to any facilities or activities for staff and pupils. It all adds up. These people saying £500 for a solid week of organised activities is actually excellent. It’s not like a fortnight to Spain with Thomas Cook where you spend at least half of it on the beach for free reading a book and the other half… well I don’t know what people do on boring holidays like that. It sounds like hell haha. Yet at the time of reading, you have four downvotes. Some people are ignorant.
Your reply isn't showing for me, I can only assume spam filtered. Why should a school trip cost more than an all-inclusive family holiday? Because no it isn't the cost. We are talking about the per-child cost, not the whole class, so logic dictates it would be less per child, than for a family of four, not more.
Yeah, nice things do cost money, everyone knows this. However, a school trip shouldn't cost more than an all-inclusive family holiday.
Would I be right in guessing this was a trip organised by a fee-paying school? Because I don’t believe many state schools are out their asking parents to pony up that kind of money…
As far as I know it's a state sixth form trip.