Are you so traumatised by the school trips you went on in the 90s, or are you normal?!
I understand that there’s a LOT more safeguarding nowadays. I can’t be the only person who’s experiences on school trips has left them hoping their kids will never want to go on one.
When I was in year seven, we went on a school trip to Disneyland and a year 11 girl from our school came back pregnant. On a trip to the Lake District we were taken open water swimming on a cold spring day, and then left to camp outside - next to a graveyard!
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On one trip to Alton Towers, I got stung by a bee in the queue for the Congo River Rapids and my hand swelled to three times its normal size. So when my son refused to take part in a traditional Scouse initiation excursion to Colomendy, I was more than relieved - I was thrilled.
School trips are a permission slip to throw all rules out of the window. The unleashing of excited children, semi-supervised by young, equally excited, hedonistic teachers. It's no wonder we’ve all got a scandalous school trip tale to share.
The next time you get a letter from the school, presenting you with some amazing “educational” opportunity for your child, you might want to read the below anecdotes before you pay your deposit.
One friend remembers a Spanish trip in year eight. “Loads of the girls were caught in boys beds. But the teachers couldn’t say anything to our parents because they were all drunk and playing swingers games.”
Two friends camped in the grounds of high security psychiatric hospitals. Why? My friend Sarah recalls a trip to Amsterdam where a teacher took £10 off her for beer and knocked her lighter. Hannah remembers getting lost in Barcelona for six hours, in year eight! “My kids are going nowhere” she stresses.
One of my fairest friends remembers covering herself in castor oil rather than the factor 50 her mum packed, adding, “I cooked!”
Another woman told me her husband went away to New York with school in year nine and they literally left him somewhere by accident. “The shyest kid you could ever imagine, and autistic! Just randomly left in a shop in the busiest city in the world.”
Jen recalls a Duke of Edinbrugh trip that went down in history as a total Sh*g fest in year 10. “The teachers only found out because one silly girl wrote about it in her diary, which resulted in multiple interrogations in the head teacher's office. Major catholic school disgrace.”
Laura said: “We once went skiing in Austria and all pierced our ears using a pin badge, and snow as numbing agent.”
Stacey remembers getting lost up Moel Famau in the middle of the night. “We didn’t get home until 1am”.
Alex said: “We went to Colomendy when I was about 14. We were building rafts in Lake Bala, supervised by a few soldiers. We were all in wet suits and one of the soldiers had a hole in his, where his privates kept falling out! We thought it was hilarious and he 100% knew.”
For me, the trophy goes to Bev for her account of a school trip to Belgium. She said: “No joke it was carnage! We were all drinking and sneaking into the boys' rooms. But the worst part was, on the drive home at Calais port, our second driver fell off the bus and we ran over him! No joke! It was traumatic!”
Nell said: “First night in France we got flashed by an elderly man while the teacher was taking the register. Then the next day we got lost outside for hours and loads of us got sun stroke. But they still made us climb some cliffs! All the teachers got absolutely hammered on the ferry home, and four of us ended up in Alder Hey with sunstroke.”
Amazing stories! But some of the trips I heard about this week, surely should have never been allowed. Bev’s tale was slightly more concerning than the others.
Bev said: “Our school, for some reason, owned a little house in the south of France. Which was weird in itself as it was an awful school with 13% GCSE pass rate. Our very handsy DT teacher took four of us year nine's away on his own for 10 days! It was like a holiday, just going for meals and what not. I'm not sure how it was allowed. Rumours later on, suggested he’d got the art's assistant and a year 11 girl pregnant.”
Vic said: “We went on a small yacht around Fleetwood for the weekend. Me, the geography teacher and two other kids. We had a laugh but none of it was educational. It was a little bit weird, but nothing specific happened. Although he did get caught in bed with a school leaver a few years later.”
Acceptable school trips, in my personally opinion, are local theatre, panto, museum, Knowsley Safari, a daytime sports event or competition. Unacceptable school trips include anything abroad on a coach or ferry, skiing, anywhere sunstroke could be possible, over nights in hotels, chateaus, boats or cabins. Anything involving water, anything involving other schools or other children, anything that isn’t a one day sports competition. Absolutely no rock climbing, cave exploring, cable cars.
It would be irresponsible not to point out that a child on a school trip has a statistically insignificant chance of suffering a fatal accident. But it does happen. Statistics suggest it’s an average of one to three deaths on school trips each year. And listen, no-one died on my school trips. But enough went on to make me feel uneasy about them.
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