Baines School is committed to the general principle of free education and recognises the valuable contribution that a wide range of activities, including school visits and residential experiences, can make towards all aspects of students’ education. It also believes that all our students should have an equal opportunity to benefit from academy activities and visits (curricular and extracurricular) independent of their parent’s financial means.
The school recognises its responsibility to ensure that the offer of activities and educational visits does not place an unnecessary burden on family finances. To this end we will try to adhere to the following guidelines:
- where possible we shall publish a list of visits (and their approximate cost) at the beginning of the school year so that parents can plan ahead
- we will establish a system for parents to pay in instalments for more expensive trips and if parents wish to request an instalment method for other trips, they can contact the school to arrange this
- when an opportunity for a trip arises at short notice it will be possible to arrange to pay by instalments beyond the date of the trip
- we acknowledge that offering opportunities on a ‘first pay, first served’ basis discriminates against pupils from families on lower incomes and we will avoid that method of selection.
The 1996 Education Act requires all schools to have a policy on charging and remissions for school activities, which will be kept under regular review.
The policy identifies activities for which:
- voluntary contributions may be requested
- charges will be made
- charges will not be made
- charges may be waived