School trips

[MK Shrimper]

Now of late I have been quite astounded at the story of kids being quarrantined in China with swine flu who are on a school trip. Not at the Chinese waving guns in their faces (allegedly), or locking them up in hotel rooms, but just the fact that a school trip has gone to China!

My nephew was supposed to go to a footy trip to Sweden but it got cancelled and instead went on a football trip to California, costing my brother a small fortune.

In my day I went as far as Swanage and Doncaster

I feel for parents who have to fund these extorniate jaunts which to me seems a freebie holiday for teachers.

Thoughts!

 

[manor15]

At the start of GCSEs there are loads of "optional" trips aboard, some of my friend are going to Barcelona in October on a trip and Berlin in April on a trip as well as the skiing trip to Austria in February!

 

[MK Shrimper]

Credit crunch Britain. If these poor little diddums don't get their skiing trip will they throw a strop and will it make them look like bad parents.

Answering my own questions;

1) Yes but **** them.
2) No.

 

[OldBlueLady]

I know what you mean Paul, but it has always been the same in my experience. There were the "ordinary" trips, like field trips to Swanage or a day trip to Calais, but every year there was also a cruise to the Holy Lands and also a ski-ing trip. Those with well off parents got to do whatever they wanted of these. The only one I ever did was Russia when in the Lower VIth, can't remember how I convinced my parents at the time but I had a brilliant time on it.

Now though, there are expensive trips every year, ski-ing is no longer to Italy by coach but to Colorado. There's history trips to Washington DC, geography trips to South America, business trips to New York. Seems to me, it's what the teachers want! My daughter did a 4 day trip to Paris a couple of years back and it was really expensive, yet they went by coach, were 4 or 5 to a room and had terrible food by all accounts.

I know of someone else on here who recently had to put his foot down about a school trip his child wanted to go on - it served no purpose educationally and was ridiculously expensive.

 

[Jedi Shrimper]

I went to Llandudno.

**** happens.

 

[Mad Cyril]

I had a day trip to Boulogne where I discovered they have a very liberal attitude concerning the sale of knives, fireworks and adult material to minors.

Highlight of the day was when I purchased a Pain au Chocolat in my finest GCSE French.

 

[Davros]

i went to Norway for a week (Hardangavedda i think), was good fun. Most other trips were to Museums or farms, and most notibly, Tilbury Power Station!

 

[Smiffy]

Highlight for me during my school time, was a couple of week long trips to P.G.L. camps in the Brecons. Had a cracking time to be fair and was the moment when I first discovered the fun you could have with the opposite sex...

 

[Pubey]

I went to St Omer, the Ypres battlefields, Swanage and various museums at school. I was due to go on the ski-trip to France but broke my arm just before it and had to miss out. My sister went skiing in America and spent a few days in New York, and my brother went of a few skiing holidays in europe. If people (parents) are willing to pay I've got no issue with where they go for school trips. Personally it's up to the parents to consider if it's good value for their children to go, but I think that foreign travel and experiencing foreign cultures is all part of growing up. With my family, going on a school 'holiday' would have been at the expense of going skiing with the family anyway, so I think it actually worked out good value for us. Our school never did trips to South America or wherever, there was a trip to Russia and Berlin I think for the history lot... oh and the Isle of Aaron for the geologists

At uni doing my masters we organised a trip to Geneva to visit the WHO, UNICEF and Novartis pharmaceutical company... it was excellent fun and really interesting

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Chain the little ***** to their desks and make them learn proper sentence structure.

 

[EastStandBlue]

I wouldn't exactly classify it as a "Freebie holiday"... I think that's being incredibly unfair on the people who are babysitting your children for the duration of their stay, especially taking into account these kids are far more likely to act up when away from parents.

There's also a hell of a lot of paper work and preparation into these trips. I went to Brussels on a trip and I remember the teacher saying a 3 day trip will take 3 weeks to organise and fill out the paper work for.


I used to go on a lot of football tours when I was younger though. France, Italy, Germany, Holland and Spain we went to... Won the Holland Easter Classic in Maastricht, beating Kilmarnock in the Semi's.

 

[Pubey]

I wouldn't exactly classify it as a "Freebie holiday"... I think that's being incredibly unfair on the people who are babysitting your children for the duration of their stay, especially taking into account these kids are far more likely to act up when away from parents.

There's also a hell of a lot of paper work and preparation into these trips. I went to Brussels on a trip and I remember the teacher saying a 3 day trip will take 3 weeks to organise and fill out the paper work for.


I used to go on a lot of football tours when I was younger though. France, Italy, Germany, Holland and Spain we went to... Won the Holland Easter Classic in Maastricht, beating Kilmarnock in the Semi's.

I went on orchestra tours... which were basically just binge drinking holidays when 16/17, absolutely amazing times! I went to Italy, Poland, Germany, Paris, Austria and Holland

 

[EastStandBlue]

I'll never forget when we went to Holland when we were 16, our first night there we'd barely eaten and went out with the older age group. I had to carry our captain home, put him to bed and then went back down to the hotel bar till 2am. The morning after we found out he'd got up in the middle of the night and taken a crap in the wardrobe and covered it up with all his underwear.

Awesome banter.

 

[maninasuitcase]

I did a school trip to copenhagen, Helsinki, Travemunde and St Petersburg on a cruise. We did loads of museums and I believe the teachers that went paid their own fare.

I also went on a geography field trip to Torbay and Dartmoor.

 

[Vange Shrimper]

Some of the trips my place do are:

Norfolk
Ypres
Berlin
Walton on the Naze
Pennines
Austria skiing

They also do a few little trips to the theatre, Dickens World etc

But when a family has to pay out for Austria, Norfolk and a couple of theatre trips in one year, it will cost them a fortune.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

I did a school trip to copenhagen, Helsinki, Travemunde and St Petersburg on a cruise. We did loads of museums and I believe the teachers that went paid their own fare.

I also went on a geography field trip to Torbay and Dartmoor.

Well it would seem, er, that congratulations are in order!

 

[Jedi Shrimper]

I also went on a school field trip to a sewage works.

**** really did happen.

 

[Pubey]

I also went on a school field trip to a sewage works.

**** really did happen.

i just remember, I went to a box factory!

 

[chadded]

I went to the Millenium Dome and found a leak in the roof.

 

[Davros]

I went on orchestra tours... which were basically just binge drinking holidays when 16/17, absolutely amazing times! I went to Italy, Poland, Germany, Paris, Austria and Holland

This one time, at band camp....