Dear Parents and Carers,

Re: Funding for School Visits

On behalf of the Governing Body of St Oswald’s C of E Academy I am writing to you to ask for support regarding our children’s school visits. At present, despite asking for voluntary contributions, these visits are running at an overall net loss to the school each year. This means that they have to be cross subsidised from other areas of funding.

In 2018-19 this subsidy amounted to over £1000 which could have been used for additional resources to help our pupils.

In addition our expected Government funding compared with last year has decreased by £75,000 despite the rises in salary and inflationary overhead costs. We are lucky compared to most schools; we have an active PTA and in the past have been successful at obtaining commercial capital grants and sponsorship so we can absorb some of this reduction.

We hope you agree that school visits bring your child’s learning to life, plus additional social and academic benefits which practical learning brings compared with classroom learning.

As a Governing Body, we took the difficult decision last week that trips which were insufficiently funded, would be cancelled and not subsidised from other school funds. We explored a number of alternative options before doing this including (amongst others):

• Reducing staffing hours across the school to fund the cross-subsidy
• Not offering school trips at all

None of these we felt matched our school’s Christian ethos or our desire to offer a varied experiential learning environment.

Therefore, unfortunately we have had to take the difficult decision to cancel a trip with Y1 and FS2 to the Yorkshire Museum. As less than half of parents had paid before the due date, despite a number of reminders, this trip was financially unviable. Sadly, this situation will be repeated in the future if we do not receive sufficient voluntary payments before the due date. However, be reassured, if a trip is cancelled due to insufficient payments any funds paid will be refunded (less non-refundable deposits where previously advised). This does not apply in situations where specific pupils are not allowed to attend due to behaviour issues.

Please remember, we will never stop a child from attending a trip due to their parent’s financial situation. If you require either assistance to pay the fees or would like a bespoke payment plan, please either speak to Mrs Patton or the school office. I assure you that any conversations will be treated in the strictest of confidence.

Kind Regards

Dave Moore

CoG – on behalf of the Governing Body