School trips are important and anger over cancellations at Dover is understandable - Jayne Dowle

I totally feel the pain of parents, children, and teachers. Lizzie, my 17-year-old A Level student daughter, was so looking forward to a three-day college trip to Berlin in the middle of March, organised as part of her History studies.

She’d spent ages selecting outfits, packed and weighed her case, prepared herself mentally for getting up at 2.30am on the Monday morning to meet the coach, only to receive a message on Sunday teatime that the whole trip was off.

The teachers heard at the last moment that strikes by German airport workers were to close all airports the next day. The flight was cancelled. The carefully-planned itinerary, including a visit to a concentration camp, left in tatters.

Poor Lizzie was in tears, absolutely gutted. Thanks to Covid putting paid to the GCSE History trip to Berlin her brother, Jack, enjoyed a few years ago, this would have been her very first solo trip abroad. It can’t be rescheduled because of examinations.

We’ve got our money back, in case you’re wondering. That was money I had to scrape together a week before Christmas to secure her place, but at least I could just about manage to find it, as I always have.

Since both my children started school, I’ve always strongly believed that they should take part in as many school trips as possible. Financially, I admit, this has not always been easy.

Although I’ve always done my best to take my children to interesting places myself, there are benefits to school trips that can’t be beaten.

Independence, for a start, although I’ve done my duties as ‘parent-helper’, with memorable visits to regional places of interest, such as the wonderful Shibden Hall, near Halifax.

And then there’s what I call the ‘comfort factor’. On residential trips, my children have been trepidatious about sharing rooms with other kids, worried about what they might get to eat, and afraid that they’re not going to make friends with anyone outside their immediate circle.

Pushing themselves out of the cocoon has always turned out to garner positive results. When Jack went to Berlin in Year 10, he was quite a lonely boy at school. I worried as I watched his sad face through the window of the departing coach. But he came back mates with a brand-new gang of lads, and they’re all still firm friends today.

And, I’m acutely aware that there is a huge chasm between state and independently-educated children in this country. Privileged children could be taken to amazing places by their wealthy parents several times a year.

Going on a school trip to Calais might not be as glamorous as business class and five star hotels, but if it expands a child’s horizons and allows them to see the world from a different angle, it can only ever be a positive thing.

My heart goes out to the parents whose household budgets have no room for manoeuvre at all; some schools do have funds to offer assistance to families in need, but with the current cost of living crisis, too many children have no chance of even leaving their home town right now.

Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Charitable Trust, which runs 52 schools in England, recently identified cutting trips as the easiest way for a school to reduce costs, while a survey of school governors in January showed trips were the second greatest casualty of the budget pressures on schools.

This is especially poignant to me. When my dad, a steelworker, was on strike in the early 1980s, my secondary school English teacher, Mr Richards, paid, out of his own money, for me to go on a theatre trip to Manchester. I don’t recall the play now, but I will never forget his kindness. When I said, “I can’t go sir, my dad is on strike”, he waved away my concern and replied, “it’s all taken care of.”

Too many children in the UK today wouldn’t even have got as far as those horrendous queues at Dover. And that is the biggest shame of all.