How to Organize School Excursions

School Excursions or field trips are a great way to expand the learning experience of students beyond the classroom. They also make for a good travel experience for both the teachers and students alike as traveling in a group often does. But a lot goes into planning an executing a successful excursion that many schools abandon the idea altogether.

1. Choose Where to Go

Planning a field trip or an excursion for your pupils need not be a tedious affair if you know how to go about it. Deciding where to visit is relatively the easy part. You can easily, depending on the purpose of the trip, chose a location that is best for the excursion.

2. Choose a Suitable Time

Such a trip would usually be costlier than usual during school holidays because these locations would be swarmed by visitors then. You might want to schedule your excursion for time during school session or during a school holiday when the cost of the trip won't be unnecessarily high.

3. Get Authorization

Sometimes the biggest disappointment comes from having made all the plans or having gone quite far with planning and then having senior management of the school shutting down the excursion. Get a head start by pitching the excursion to senior management or your principal and securing authorization for it early enough. It helps to get backing and support from the relevant authorities as it will make things a lot easier.

4. Decide on a Budget

Now you know where it is you want to go to. You have to get accurate details on how much the entire trip will cost. Entrance fees, cost of trip, feeding and how much it will cost to book cheap hotel rooms (if the trip will span more than a day) and miscellaneous all have to be figured out so you know how much you need to raise and how much to ask from each student.

5. Seek Parental Consent

This is critical as well. Security is a growing concern everywhere so you should expect stiff scrutiny from some parents. Some may not allow their kids on the trip and that's fine. You, with the aid of your school authority need to convince the parents that you have put everything in place to ensure their wards' safety and security. Also sell them the importance of the trip and those two reasons will get you more consent.

6. Embark on Your Trip

After you've made all the required plans and have got every required authorization and permission, you then go ahead to embark on the trip as scheduled. Make sure to make the trip be fun and interesting for your students. Also, be on the lookout to learn from the trip as well.