Learning to ski is “cold and exhausting”, admits principal teacher of PE Steven Harvey. You fall down - a lot - and have to be determined to get the reward of (eventually) swishing your way down a snow-covered mountain.

And this is a key reason why it’s a good idea to take teenagers to the slopes, he argues: it teaches them to be resilient.

Other reasons Harvey cites for making the hassle of an international trip worthwhile include broadening pupil horizons and ambitions, improving social and emotional skills and showing students “they aren’t excluded from anything because of where they grew up and went to school”.

Harvey’s department at John Paul Academy in Glasgow, which serves some of the UK’s most deprived areas, believes a week-long ski trip to Andorra for more than 40 senior students in February was, then, educationally valid. But fewer children are now experiencing school trips abroad, and arguments against Harvey’s view are growing. So, are the days of international trips by schools numbered?

Central to this debate in Scottish education just now is whether ambitious - and often extremely expensive - trips abroad are compatible with the widely shared aspiration that no one should be excluded from activities because they can’t afford them.

Even the traditional P7 residential trip - typically a few nights away at a local outdoor adventure centre - can set families back hundreds of pounds. More ambitious overseas trips run by secondary schools can cost thousands, and even when fundraising heavily subsidises trips - as occurred at Harvey’s school - for some families, even a little is too much.

Equally, there is a rising sense that schools cannot, on the one hand, be raising environmental consciousness then, on the other, jump on a plane without considering the impact.

One headteacher tells us: “We can’t be saying, ‘We’ve got a green flag,’ and that’s it. We have to consider, ‘What does our [carbon] footprint look like?’ So, that impacts on things like, ‘Why are you flying to South Africa to play rugby?’”

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Recent conditions have also made going abroad more difficult. Rising insurance and fuel costs, sustainability, Brexit bureaucracy and post-Covid learning challenges are all making schools, and society more generally, take a second look at the value of trips away from school. On the issue of Brexit red tape, a House of Commons Library paper last year showed the administrative burden that Brexit had placed on both UK schools wanting to travel abroad and schools overseas hoping to travel to the UK.

But to what extent has this led to preventative actions by local authorities? We asked Scotland’s councils if they had put any blocks on trips abroad. While many have restored school trips abroad to at least some degree following a Covid hiatus, in Edinburgh and East Lothian overseas trips have, for example, been temporarily suspended until new processes for assessing their suitability are put in place.

In East Lothian, schools will be asked to consider whether a trip’s aims could be achieved more locally and whether they are ensuring that all pupils can participate; a council spokesperson said it wants to make sure “all trips have a solid curricular purpose” and are “truly accessible to all pupils”.

In Edinburgh, schools are also unable to take groups of pupils abroad just now because a new vetting process for planning and approving overseas travel has yet to begin. The authority says it expects the new scheme to be running before Easter and that it will “minimise financial and Covid-19 risks” as well as address wider council priorities of “equity, equality and environmental sustainability”.

The barriers

Other reasons given by councils for advising schools against overseas trips include concerns about safety because of the conflict in Ukraine; the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic; and “uncertainty around insurance relating to cover for Covid-related cancellation or impact”.

For all those reasons Falkirk Council, as a general rule, is advising schools not to plan international trips, although one recent exception was a visit to Poland as part of Holocaust remembrance events.

And Renfrewshire Council says that - while there is no ban on overseas trips - it is instructing schools to warn parents that trip cancellations due to pandemics are not covered by the council’s travel insurance.

South Lanarkshire Council, meanwhile, says that schools are being “asked to consider the affordability of overseas trips in light of the cost of the school day”.

This narrowing of opportunity is not limited to Scotland. In England, there have also been reports of pupils missing out on “invaluable” school trips because of rising transport costs. Petrol and diesel prices have come down in recent months but are still being described as “way above” previous peaks. Teachers also report that lesson cover can be another barrier - so even if a trip is deemed affordable, teachers cannot get out of school because there is no one to take their classes.

The concerns noted by the councils do have some substance. In terms of insurance, some Scottish local authorities have already been burned. When Covid hit and schools were shut in March 2020, dozens of school trips had to be cancelled. Some authorities opted to refund parents before cash had been recouped from providers or insurers, so families would not be out of pocket.

While many councils eventually got their money back, it was often a gruelling process and not always entirely successful. Highland Council, for example, estimates that its overall spend on school trip refunds across 2020-21 and 2021-22 was more than £300,000.

Rites of passage

However, some argue that the costs argument can be seen another way: if the educational value of a trip is as high as those such as Harvey say it is, then shouldn’t these trips be fully funded?

John Dickie is director of Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland, whose work on the cost of the school day has highlighted hidden costs associated with going to school, including school trips. Interestingly, however, he is not fully behind the idea espoused by some councils and headteachers that trips abroad should, in the interest of equity, no longer be run. Instead, he would prefer to see trips abroad made truly open to everyone.

“We wouldn’t want to see - in the name of reducing costs and ensuring inclusion and equity - opportunities being lost,” says Dickie. “The important thing is if these opportunities are seen as being of real value, they need to be available to all and adequately funded.”

Indeed, this was a manifesto pledge of the SNP: to ensure that “less-well-off families do not face costs for curriculum-related trips and activities, and that all pupils are able to attend ‘rite of passage’ trips”. The manifesto also promised to “introduce a minimum entitlement for all secondary pupils to attend at least one ‘optional’ trip during their time at school”.

So, in theory, costs should not be an issue because they should be covered.

‘If these opportunities are seen as being of real value, they need to be available to all’

The Scottish government says it is “continuing to work towards this commitment to ensure that learners from lower-income families can always join in”.

A spokesperson added: “Scottish Attainment Challenge funding, including Pupil Equity funding, is used by some schools to make sure that pupils face no costs for extracurricular activities such as residential trips, theatre experiences and outdoor learning experiences.”

Of course, many schools already work hard to keep trips low-cost or cost-free, or have processes in place to support families. There is also more awareness now that long lead-in times and allowing families to pay in instalments can help.

CPAG’s work has highlighted that fundraising drives can put pressure on struggling families, but Dickie is clear this does not mean that fundraising should be ruled out altogether.

“This is about fundraising beyond the immediate families at the school and looking at other ways of involving pupils in fundraising - so bag packing in local supermarkets and looking to local businesses in and beyond the school community,” he says.

Ultimately, however, Dickie comes back to his key message that if overseas trips are seen as being important, schools should be “adequately funded so that they don’t need to cut back on the key opportunities they offer young people”.

What about trips closer to home?

In that spirit, a bill making its way through the Scottish Parliament - driven by Conservative MSP and former teacher Liz Smith - could soon make a week-long outdoor residential a legal entitlement for students aged 12-16. However, the focus is very much domestic; there is no intention to make foreign trips an entitlement, and Smith stresses that Scotland has some of the “most remarkable scenery and wild places anywhere in the world”.

Does Harvey think this would have the same impact as a trip abroad?

His department runs an outdoor education elective for senior students, and he has no doubt about the benefits that these more local experiences in the great outdoors can have for students’ confidence and resilience.

But Harvey is also clear about the value of taking students overseas and teaching them “to be ambitious”, “daring” and to “take risks”, especially when many haven’t been abroad or on a plane before. Moreover, all the time spent at home during Covid has, he believes, led to many people becoming “quite sheltered and parochial”.

Still, there is no doubt that, even if some still organise a wide range of trips abroad, opportunities to travel overseas with schools are becoming rarer.

In the recent past The Royal High School in Edinburgh, for example, has run an array of trips - including a ski trip and a trip to Germany with the modern languages department - but over the years, in response to concerns about the cost of the school day, these have been scaled back. Now, trips are largely local, with the exception of a visit to the First World War battlefields in S3 that the school ensures is affordable for all. This May, around 200 students will make that journey and headteacher Pauline Walker is confident that no one has opted out for financial reasons.

“It’s important in schools that everyone can access the same opportunities, so asking for £1,000 for a school trip just isn’t going to cut it any more,” she says.

Headteachers essentially face a choice: they either scale back their offer in a bid to maximise participation or they maintain a wider range of overseas trips, some of which will continue to be out of reach for a number of their students.

Ultimately, there must surely be a sensible middle way that sifts out extravagant foreign trips with questionable educational value but does not issue a blanket ban on overseas travel by schools - because to do so would cut out experiences that may genuinely transform a student’s view of the world and their possibilities within it.

As always, it comes down to money - and if our MSPs ultimately decide that excursions within Scotland should be an entitlement, surely there is a strong case to attach the same importance to potentially life-changing travel overseas.

Emma Seith is senior reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith