When will schools be able to travel again…? (Part 1)
January 27, 2021
Summer 2021? September? 2022…? As an established tour operator who deals almost exclusively with schools delivering school trips to France, this is the question we’ve been asking ourselves since March last year. In 22 years of operating château school trips, we’ve never lived such an extended period of closure, so we can’t wait for school trips to Château Beaumont to be possible again. What are the key issues? Teacher and Parent Confidence, Insurance, Covid-19 Safety and Brexit seem to be the hot topics... Over the next 4 weeks we'll comment on each here.
- Teacher and Parent Confidence.
Teachers are experts at imparting knowledge so that children want to learn; providers are experts at providing safe environments for all kinds of learning experiences outside the classroom. We believe that while the confidence around trips is strong, it’s faltering over how Covid-19 will impact upon it. What happens if a child or teacher develops symptoms while abroad? Who is responsible (and who wants to be responsible…) for the outcome? Which authority leads on the response – the home country or the visited country? What protocols are in place?
Château Beaumont is part of the British Activity Providers Association (BAPA), which itself is a founding member of UK Outdoors. In the past 6 months UK Outdoors has developed a Covid-19 operating plan for the outdoor and residential sector on behalf of, and in collaboration with, the School Travel Stakeholders Group (STSSG). This group was set up in October by the Department for Education to inform and develop a roadmap to schools being able to travel again, when the science allows. The Covid-19 plan sets out procedures and guidelines that providers can draw upon to supplement their own long experience of upholding safety, safeguarding and supporting schools while on trips; it goes a long way to answering those hard questions.
Château Beaumont also was able to run summer camps for French children during July and August 2020 so we already have had the experience and opportunity of delivering an exciting linguistic holiday under strict visitor and operational guidelines.
So please email us to pencil in a booking for 2022! There's no financial commitment for us to hold that until the insurance situation becomes clear, which is next week's hot topic for this blog!
Bon courage et bonne continuation,
The Château Beaumont Team