Tristram Hunt on school history trips in the Observer today

I very much agree with Tristram Hunt's article in the Observer today, which also flags up the fact we're setting up the Trust. He rightly raises the issue of the high costs of taking young people on school trips, particularly abroad. And I think that it's right that students should mainly visit scenes of British historical note as a way of transforming what often can be worthy teaching of the grey facts in a school classroom into colour.

One note of caution though - simply because taking young people abroad is expensive, increases carbon at a time when we need vitally need to be saving the planet, and might encourage them to learn about the history of America rather than the history of Britain, does not mean that those students from lower income backgrounds should be denied the opportunity to go abroad per se if that is what is being offered to other students who can afford it in state schools. I think the main problem with trips to New York, Barcelona or the Grand Canyon is that it reflects what parents think their children would prefer to do, rather than what would make sense educationally. It is this which needs to be tackled, rather than the trips themselves.

At our last trustees meeting we heard that even in inner city schools, many more parents somehow find the cash to fund four nights at EuroDisney rather than one night and day visiting the trenches and experiencing the sheer scale of the war memorials in Northern France. This suggests that there is more at work here than schools simply going for jollys in foreign lands - the pressure to be seen to give children a 'fun time' translates for many parents into the tried and tested formulas of novelty and glamour. Sadly, there needs to be a marked cultural shift in general for parents to understand the significance of why visiting the Great East Window at York Minster might be worth more for their child in the long-term than a trip to Alton Towers.

This raises a significant future challenge for Gareth's History Trust which is to ensure that when we fund school history trips, there is a significant support from parents for the trip, as well as pupils and teachers, otherwise the same groups of better-off children will continue to reap the benefits of our fascinating history.