Visiting London with Year 8

School trips are a fantastic opportunity for learning, but they must be planned tightly. Each trip must be carefully justified – what will the students learn which they cannot learn in school? Is this sufficient to justify them (and you) having a day out of the classroom? Does the trip fit into your Scheme of Work (and if it is vital to your students’ studies, can you guarantee that they will all be able to go on it?) The other problem is that it can be very hard to share ideas for trips with colleagues outside our immediate environs, for obvious reasons. This particular trip is set in central London, a short journey from my own school; the general principle, though, is of investigating public interpretations of the past.