School Trips, Visitors & Enrichment Opportunities

Since January 2023 we have returned to the same frequency of school trips offered pre pandemic.

There are two differences for us as school today compared with 4 years ago.

The first is that we no longer have the capacity to release teaching assistants from other classes to accompany children on trips so we are very reliant on parent volunteers. We would really appreciate it if more parents would join our list of volunteers - the school will pay for the required DBS checks. If you are willing to help, please email the school (PontllanfraithPrimary@sch.caerphilly.gov.uk).

The second is that the cost of transport has increased dramatically.

The money we raise for School Fund each Christmas, helps us to bring the cost down for parents, but it is not going as far as it used to.

For example, the total cost of the trip to the Pantomime (Years 1-6) was £2073.33. The buses cost us £1000 which was almost as much as the tickets (£1073.33). Parent contributions came to £1350. Nearly all parents paid.

We are mindful of the cost of living crisis when planning trips. Whilst the pantomime is not an educational trip, the majority are, and all children must be included regardless of whether parents contribute.

School Fund has previously been used to pay 100% of the cost for buses booked for sporting activities (usually minibuses and sometimes we are able to share with other cluster schools - we're looking at doing this for the next netball tournament after half term).

Sometimes we bring in visitors to run workshops that supplement topic work in addition to trips or instead of trips, for example the No Boundaries workshops we delivered last term. At the moment, the school pays for this. Sometimes we run workshops as attendance rewards (as the school pays for this and the cost of transport has now made reward trips too expensive). Last year we ran samba and ICT work shops as a reward. We have been unable to fund similar this year.

Cardiff City & Gateway Rugby were initially booked with additional funding to support pupil wellbeing during the pandemic. School has been able to continue this funding for this academic year but is unable to do so for future years.