If a trip’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well!

Cactus presented recently at the London Language Show, on the subject of organising school language trips overseas. We’ve been asked to reproduce the essence of the presentation for the website.

Our thanks again to the following schools who have used Cactus, and organisations who kindly contributed to our research:
Northbridge School, Wycombe Abbey School, Tonbridge School, Elmhurst Dance School, Dulwich College, STS, Camps Abroad. Many of the comments below come from the feedback schools have given us, based on their experience of successful trips abroad.

Many of the seminar attendees in the audience were teachers who were contemplating the idea of taking a group overseas for the first time, so this article is mainly aimed at willing group leaders in search of guidance, support and ideas.

Planning A School Trip Abroad

Is it worth it?
Getting colleagues on board
What is expected of you as a group leader?
Planning the destination
Using an external organisation
Recruiting students and parents
What works well on a trip
Risk Assessment
What if my school is on a tight budget?
How much will an agency like Cactus help?
Further reading and training
Getting in touch

Is it worth it?
There is very little doubt that a language trip abroad is hugely beneficial as it really brings language to life, and gives students a clear demonstration of the validity of language learning, and the benefits and enjoyment that can be gained from years of endeavour.

In-country language learning not only inspires, but it can also dramatically improve performance. It irreversibly enhances the rapport you have with your pupils and can only help make your life easier in the future. Depending on where you go, it might also be that you have the opportunity to revisit old haunts, maybe where you studied on your year abroad during university.

Unfortunately, and much thanks to the media for this, fears of liability and litigation are often sufficient to guarantee a trip never sees the light of day.

Getting colleagues on board
If a trip has any chance of getting off the ground, it really needs to have widespread backing. If heads of department, SMT and LEA are not open to the idea and willing to support you, then the trip might have to be shelved until the climate is more favourable. It generally seems to come down to precedence: whether trips have been organised at your school in the past, how well they went, who organised them, how well they coped with it, and whether that teacher is still at the school.

The best case scenario will always be to pick up the reigns from a seasoned colleague, who can show you the ropes over a series of trips. Ideally you’ll go first as a leader/teacher, under the direction of a Group Leader. On the next trip you’ll share the organisational role and have full awareness of the process leading up to the trip, and then you’ll be Group Leader with, in an ideal world, your Group Leader guru accompanying you as deputy.

This way, good practice and personal experience will be handed on and the perceived and actual risks associated with these trips are competently managed and foreseen. Also, such an approach will ensure you gain the respect of peers and SMT as being a reliable trip organiser in the future.

What is expected of you as a group leader?
Organisation, organisation, organisation. Teachers are notoriously good mental gymnasts thanks to the nature of the day-to-day job. Being able to step up the juggling is a key skill.

It’s important to have a clear, structured approach to organising a trip, and an ability to ‘helicopter’ above the whole process, be aware of potential weaknesses, problem areas, missing information, issues, risks etc, and have the mental and physical resources to deal with them all. Confidence in being able to keep good discipline is also vital.

You don’t have to be a superhero though. The key to a smoothly run trip is getting the timing right. At Cactus, we are typically helping schools to plan trips which will take place between 8 and 12 months in advance. The minimum we’re comfortable with is about 4 months’ notice, and this, mostly for repeat bookings to destinations known to the group leader.

Managing your group and the other teachers is a fundamental part of the role of group leader, and it should be absolutely clear from the outset, who is responsible for whom and what, and how this responsibility changes for different activities and for changes to the programme.

The document listed at the end, A HANDBOOK FOR GROUP LEADERS is an excellent source of information with useful points of advice which illustrates the frame of mind required for running a trip abroad.

Planning the destination
Wherever possible we strongly recommend you go to a place you already know. The familiarity you have with a destination comes into its own when you need a Plan B! It may be an opportunity to return to where you spent a year in a foreign university, or it could simply be a holiday favourite.

Whether or not you personally know the destination, good research and information gathering will give you the background information you’ll need when speaking to students, parents and colleagues. Everything you read or find out from colleagues should be help you to start visualising your schedule.

In any case, if you’re working with Cactus, we’ll insist that the (ideally) the group leader or another leader, go on a short exploratory visit. This will give you the opportunity to visit the school, any excursion venues, and walk the pedestrian routes you’re likely to take.

Using an external organisation
You don’t have to use an external agency like Cactus, and many schools organise their own school trips abroad using only internal resources. According to the schools we work with, the advantage of using agencies is that they can share the organisational burden, communicate their needs to the agency when it’s convenient for them to do so, and then leave the agency to undertake the tiresome back and forth phoning and arranging. The right agency should also be willing and able to support you in creating the risk assessment documents you’ll need.

Agencies receive commission from the private language schools overseas, so they will not generally charge you more than if you had gone directly to that school. You might be able to negotiate a group discount with a foreign language school but in return, you then have the full weight of the administrative task, and less points of contact and familiarity with the school staff, when it comes to asking for help and getting things sorted.

Working with an agency can help you to structure your approach to organising the trip too. At Cactus, we help you pin down precisely what you are looking for before we return your quote to you. See our pre-quote checklist for details.

Recruiting students and parents
Assuming you have your management team on board, and that the kind of trip you are planning meets with LEA guidelines, and those of any other appropriate body, attention will turn to assessing and generating interest. Nothing is yet tied down in terms of reservations, but it is vital to have a good idea of what the trip will involve, in terms of locations, language school, host family or residential accommodation, transport, health and safety awareness, school travel & repatriation insurance, etc. This information needs to be conveyed in detailed documentation, illustrated with images and of some appeal. Cactus can help you with this.

It is recommended to open up the offer to as many pupils as possible, and be prepared to run a reserve list, ready to top up numbers when, almost inevitably, other pupils have to pull out along the way.

It’s also important to over-budget. Costs will have increased in 12 months time and flights will only be cheap when booked long in advance. A sizeable sum of money for contingency will give you a good range of options if things go wrong abroad.

It’s also good to try and get pupils and parents/guardians involved together from the start. This way, early concerns and objections can be overcome, and will give you a realistic picture of numbers interested, nice and early.

What works well on a trip
“Keep them busy” was the top tip we received our client schools. Every minute of each day’s schedule needs to be tied down, so you never have gaps where pupils are left unattended or with nothing to do. Here are other tips which have been passed on to Cactus:

Happy, interested and fully immersed pupils is the goal, and this can be achieved by lots of variation and novelty. There is no room when on an overseas trip for coming up with an idea on the spot. Everything must have been brainstormed with your fellow teacher-leaders, and planned activities backed up with Plan B activities. That way, if rain stops play, you move from one risk assessed activity to another, and everyone feels informed and in control. Making decisions ‘off-plan’ is to be avoided wherever possible.

Generally a good combination of intellectual stimulation and physical activity seems to do the trick. Getting the dosage right will depend on your pupils, and only you can gauge this, by knowing their interests and dislikes. For example, students might get restless on a 30-minute historical town-centre tour, but could easily spend 2 hours looking around a famous football stadium with the chance to kick a ball round.

Mixing with local pupils can also be an extremely rewarding experience. This will need to be in a controlled setting, but could involve pupils preparing a questionnaire to ask local people in the street. Make it into a competition, and you’re onto a winner. It’s important to find a location with natural boundaries, where students work in groups and cannot go out of site. Again, this is where your knowledge of the location is vital.

It’s good to have a language quiz or general knowledge quiz, or something like that up your sleeve, photocopied and ready in your bag for delays, for example if you are stuck on the coach in the rush hour. Again, offering a small prize to the fastest team will ensure good participation.

As more students have digital cameras on mobile phones, you can give students a list of things they have to find and photograph.

Risk Assessment
Much of the work fulfilling health & safety requirements for a trip revolve around the risk assessment document.

The format of this and amount of detail expected will depend on your school’s and LEA’s requirements, and these seem to vary from area to area and school to school.

Some information can be furnished by the agency via its own experience of past trips to the language school, prior use of host families and transport companies, but this should always be cross-checked and where necessary, updated, on the vital exploratory visit.

In the couple of days you spend on the exploratory visit, you should aim to go proceed through all the items on your schedule, and make time allowances for the fact you’ll have a group in tow, as well as noting down potential risks which only become obvious when you get there. These might be small points which ensure you remember to warn pupils of something before they leave the coach, or bigger threats which might cause you to reschedule an activity.

The RoSPA website is, we feel, an excellent source of reassurance as to levels of teacher non-liability, and what might constitute liability. The section on Health & Safety at School : School Trips: Part 2 (Adventures at home and away) is particularly useful.

What if my school is on a tight budget?
At Cactus, we regularly encounter the need to keep costs to a minimum. This is perfectly understandable, and Cactus will always do what it can to legitimately squeeze prices. Like elsewhere, however, the maxim, “you get what you pay for” is applicable here, where safety is important.

If you shop round for prices from language schools in a given location, you’ll find that quotes naturally vary considerably. Whilst it is easy to opt for a cheaper provider, the price we quote covers a number of factors which might not initially be apparent. This will not only be down to issues such as the quality and proximity of host family provision, or the number of trips included.

How much will an agency like Cactus help?
Whilst Cactus is a public limited company, the income Cactus receives from helping to organise group language travel for schools mostly goes to financing the cost of staff involved in the department. As a service focussed organisation, Cactus staff will always do what they can to ensure the success of a school trip abroad, but the ultimate responsibility lies on the group leader to ensure s/he has all the necessary paperwork and planning in place. Cactus is more than happy to chat to you informally and confidentially about any aspect of your planned trip, from very initial ideas through to obtaining a quotation.

- Cactus enjoys a strong relationship with its partner schools, gives us more ‘leverage’, better contact points and effective communication pathways
- Cactus is one of the very few language travel organisers which is a member of the Travel Trust Association. The TTA is a bonding organisation which offers our clients the ultimate financial security, as all monies received by Cactus from you are held in trust until your return to the UK.
- Cactus hold its own ATOL licence, the Air Travel Organisers Licence ensures that flights booked by Cactus for its clients include repatriation guarantees, should an airline go into liquidation. In the era of budget airlines, this is of particular benefit.

Further reading and training
Compulsory reading comes in the form of the HASPEV (Health & Safety of Pupils on Educational Visits) Good Practice Guides, issued by the DfES, and also the information on the RoSPA website

See www.teachernet.gov.uk/visits for the following publications:

Click on one of the following to go to straight to the download page:

HEALTH & SAFETY OF PUPILS ON EDUCATIONAL VISITS

STANDARDS FOR LEAS IN OVERSEEING EDUCATIONAL VISITS

STANDARDS FOR ADVENTURE

A HANDBOOK FOR GROUP LEADERS

GROUP SAFETY AT WATER MARGINS

Training
Apart from general health & safety and first aid training, you might also like to consider the Risk Education Training Course offered by RoSPA.

Getting in touch
We feel it would have been great to spend more time chatting, and develop the presentation into more of a workshop format, where teachers could discuss their concerns. We are therefore planning to add a forum to our site, where you can ask or answer questions. In the meantime, feel free to email us with your thoughts and concerns and we will publish these on the site with answers.