Sally Weale’s analysis (A school trip too far?, G2, 22 November) lacks some important details. In my experience many of these school-run events are actually “sold” through private companies specialising in arranging trips on behalf of schools. They are money-making businesses, and we have experienced the hard sell they lay on for parents when they make their pitch at schools. The costs of the trips are so far in excess of the actual cost (including travel and subsistence costs in developing countries) that one can only imagine the profits they are making.
The pitch often includes an element of “voluntary work” for disadvantaged local people. We have heard reports of the same wall being painted in the same school over and over again by a succession of school “volunteers”. However, the proposed programmes also include lots of (expensive) touristy options (eg bungee jumping and helicopter trips) which, apart from safety considerations, reinforce the view that the developing world is a playground for rich westerners.
Andrew Porter
London
• Apart from being unaffordable for disadvantaged pupils, there are other drawbacks to school trips. Fifty three years later, my school trip to Germany is still etched in my memory. I was bullied all week and never spoke a word of German (the German shopkeepers helpfully spoke English). Twenty years ago, we were pressured into sending our daughter on a school trip, which was equally traumatic for her, and also remembered for the wrong reasons. Those of us who are socially awkward and not natural joiners can really suffer from being exposed to fellow pupils day and night. More importantly, school trips abroad are bad for the planet. Why should over-privileged western children be taught that they have a right to use up air miles and trample wherever they like in other people’s countries? Let them learn to take pride in their own neighbourhood. If we continue as we are, the Grand Tour may not be available for our grandchildren.
Rose Meade
Faversham, Kent
• A school trip too far vividly reminded me of Venture Week in the last week of the summer term at the secondary school in which I taught in the 90s. The aim was to engage all pupils in some inspiring activity at minimal cost. Visiting the “Seven Wonders of Yorkshire” was always a sellout, particularly the chance to sing On Ilkla Moor Baht’at from the highest point of that place. Sublime or ridiculous I cannot say, probably both, but “unifying” it certainly was (Editorial, 23 November). Readers might care to speculate on the other six!
David Handley
Gargrave, North Yorkshire
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