Background to the policy
At Sandside Lodge School, we recognise the valuable contribution that a wide range of extra-curricular activities, including trips, clubs and residential experiences can make towards the education of our students. We aim to promote and provide such activities both as part of a broad and balanced curriculum for students and as additional optional enrichment activities.
Sandside Lodge School strives to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to benefit from such activities, both on and off site and within and outside of the curriculum, regardless of their family’s financial means.
We recognise our responsibility to ensure that the offer of activities and educational visits does not place an unnecessary burden on family finances and where we can we aim to:
- To the best of our knowledge, publish a list of visits and their approximate cost across all year groups at the beginning of the academic year so that parents can plan ahead;
- ensure our payments systems allow parents to pay in instalments;
- make it possible for parents to pay by instalments beyond the date of the trip when short notice opportunity arises; and
- ensure fair access to popular trips by acknowledging that offering them on a ‘first pay, first served’ basis discriminates against low income families and we will avoid that method of selection