Educational trips and exchanges: Budget challenges, post-Brexit travel, and the introduction of the Turing scheme

On 25 April 2024, the House of Lords will consider the following question for short debate:

Baroness Coussins (Crossbench) to ask His Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the importance of educational trips and exchanges from England to other countries, and the measures needed to facilitate them.

1. What are the benefits of trips and exchanges?

The Association for Language Learning, a charity representing those involved in the teaching foreign languages, has listed the benefits of school trips.^[1] It says they:

• have clear educational outcomes for language learning
• combine subject areas like geography, history and art with languages
• raise motivation and achievement
• encourage the development of key skills for adult life
• help students see wider perspectives and develop global thinking and empathy

In addition, Universities UK research on the 2016/17 graduating year indicated that university students who spent part of their programme abroad had better outcomes.^[2] It said they were:

• more likely to have earned a first class or upper second class degree
• more likely to be in further study
• less likely to be unemployed six months after graduating
• more likely to be in a graduate level job

The research noted the difference in outcomes was particularly pronounced for disadvantaged and Black and minority ethnic students.

2. Are there fewer trips and exchanges taking place?

School Travel Forum, an association for UK companies offering educational visits, has said that there were 9,830 overseas school visits from the UK in 2019, and 6,908 in 2023.^[3] This indicates there were 2,922 (29.7%) fewer trips in 2023 when compared with four years earlier.

In a 2023 survey by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity focused on social mobility, school headteachers and senior leaders reported that budget cuts had impacted trips and outings.^[4] In 2022, 21% of school leaders said they had made cuts to trips and outings. This rose to 50% in 2023. This was the highest percentage increase of any budget area cut in the survey.

Figure 1. Percentage of school leaders reporting cuts by budget area

(Sutton Trust, ‘The cost of living crisis hits school spending’, 26 April 2023)

The Sutton Trust poll suggested that schools in the most disadvantaged areas were more likely to be impacted by cuts to trips, with 68% of leaders in the most deprived schools reporting cuts, compared to 44% in the least deprived.^[5]

3. How has Brexit affected trips and exchanges?

Children on a school trip from one EU country to another can travel without a visa or a passport.^[6] This also applies to EEA states and Switzerland. Under the ‘list of travellers’ scheme operating between EU member states, a list of pupils functions as a group travel document for all attendees. This includes children in a class who are not EU citizens but who are resident in a member state.

3.1 Travelling from the UK to the EU

After leaving the EU, the UK is no longer part of the ‘list of travellers’ scheme. In most cases, each child needs to travel on their own passport.^[7]

However, there is a UK collective passport scheme for 14 EU countries plus Norway and Switzerland.^[8] A collective passport can be used as a group travel document for up to 50 children with British nationality. However, children who are attending British schools but who are not British citizens cannot be included in the group document.

British children do not need visas for short visits to the Schengen free-travel area.^[9] Some pupils at British schools would need a Schengen visa to enter the EU. Some EU countries offer visa exemptions for UK school trips.^[10]

3.2 Travelling into the UK from the EU

EU citizens do not need visas for short visits to the UK.^[11] Again, this also applies to EEA and Swiss citizens. However, a child from a non-EU country studying in an EU school may need a visa to travel to the UK.

EU citizens used to be able to travel to the UK with their national ID cards. They now need a passport.

3.3 Arrangement with France

On 7 December 2023, Home Secretary James Cleverly announced changes to travel document requirements for school groups visiting the UK from France:

We are making changes to allow children aged 18 and under, studying at a school in France, to visit the UK on an organised educational trip without the usual passport or visit visa requirements. EU, other EEA and Swiss national children will be able to travel on their national identity card. Visa national children will still be required to travel on their passport but will not have to obtain a visit visa.^[12]

Also in December 2023, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Home Office, answered a written question on whether the government would establish the same arrangements for school groups visiting the UK from Spain and Germany.^[13] He said, “We would consider negotiating with other countries should they approach us with an interest in making similar arrangements”.

4. What have been the impacts of the new travel arrangements on visits and exchanges?

In late 2023 the Association for Language Learning reported that some schools had cut trips and exchanges.^[14] Reasons included the additional workload arising from post-transition period travel arrangements, rising costs and additional safeguarding processes.

The School Travel Forum also reported schools experiencing extra costs and “complicated and time-consuming application processes”.^[15] It added that additional border checks had caused delays for groups crossing the channel.

Tourism Alliance, a trade organisation for the UK tourism industry, surveyed school group travel operators in 2023.^[16] It highlighted several barriers for incoming trips to the UK. For example, the requirement for EU citizens and others to travel on passports.

The ability to travel around the Schengen area with an ID card means that many young people living in the EU do not have passports. For example, it is estimated that only 35% of Italian school children have a passport.^[17]

Tourism Alliance said that students studying English would travel to Ireland, Malta, or summer schools in their own countries “rather than coming to the UK and having to obtain passports or deal with visa delays”.^[18]

School travel operators were asked how important certain factors were as barriers to school groups booking to come to the UK.

Figure 2. Barriers to school groups coming to the UK

(Tourism Alliance, ‘School group travel 2023 survey of operators: Key findings’, June 2023)

Speaking to the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Patricia Yates from Visit Britain reflected on the changes in June 2022:

The big change in Europe is that ID cards are no longer accepted so you have to have a passport to travel here. We have asked people, “So will you get a passport?” If everyone who said they would get a passport now got a passport, the loss to Britain would be about £600mn. If those people did not get a passport, the scale of the loss here could be over £3bn. We don’t think we are going to reverse the ID card decision, but our ask is that school visits could come on a collective ID pass because you will find destinations like Hastings absolutely decimated by a lack of school visits.^[19]

An April 2023 report from the House of Lords European Affairs Committee on ‘The future UK-EU relationship’ assessed that the decline in school visitors from the EU to the UK would have “a considerable long-term cultural impact” and “a significant economic impact”. The committee recommended the government should reintroduce a group travel scheme that would not require pupils on visits from EU countries to carry individual passports.

Looking at higher education, the committee said the Turing scheme,^[20] which provides funding for UK students to go on international work and study programmes, had “significant strengths”.^[21] However, it recommended the government should explore adding a reciprocal element for visiting students to come to English universities, modelled on Wales’s Taith scheme.^[22] It also proposed the government should consider whether there was scope for this to run alongside resumed participation in the EU’s Erasmus+ scheme.^[23]

In addition, the committee recommended the government should explore the possibility of negotiating “an ambitious reciprocal youth mobility partnership” with the EU, such as the one the UK recently agreed with Australia.^[24]

5. What has the government said about visits and exchanges?

Responding to the House of Lords European Affairs Committee report in June 2023, the government acknowledged the importance of cultural and educational exchanges.^[25] However, it said that the ambition to increase technology like electronic passport gates and the need to know in advance who intended to enter the country meant that in the future the UK was “likely to require individual documents”.^[26] It noted that the EU was moving in a similar direction and several EU countries no longer accepted UK-issued collective passports.

The government said it was not exploring the possibility of adding a reciprocal element to the Turing scheme. It argued that prioritising the use of public money to fund opportunities for UK students abroad, rather than opportunities for foreign students to come to the UK, was “one of the strengths” of the scheme.^[27] It said the number of placements arranged through the Turing scheme indicated that “funding for reciprocal inbound mobility is not necessary for higher education institutions in the UK and the EU to form exchange partnerships”.

The government decided not to continue participation in the Erasmus+ scheme after the UK left the EU as it “did not represent value for money and was not in the interests of the UK taxpayer”.^[28] However, it added that Erasmus+ funding was available for EU students to undertake higher education placements in the UK, as the UK has ‘partner country’ status.

In a written answer in October 2023, the government described the reach of the Turing scheme in relation to school visits:

The Turing scheme, launched in the 2020/21 academic year, provides funding for UK students to work and study around the world. For the current 2023/24 academic year, the Turing scheme is providing over £10mn in funding for 6,789 UK school pupils to take part in overseas visits, and over 4,400 of these pupils are due to visit EU countries.^[29]

6. Read more

• Johanna L Waters, ‘The Turing scheme was supposed to help more disadvantaged UK students study abroad—but they may still be losing out’, The Conversation, 8 March 2024
• Luke Sibieta, ‘The latest picture on school funding and costs in England’, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 1 March 2024
• Oral question on ‘School trips to the United Kingdom’, HL Hansard, 19 June 2023, cols 3–5
• British Council, ‘Language trends England 2023: Language teaching in primary and secondary schools in England’, June 2023
• House of Commons Library, ‘How does Brexit affect EU school trips?’ 20 October 2022
• QSD on ‘Cultural and education exchanges’, HL Hansard, 22 July 2021, cols 86–102GC
• House of Lords Library, ‘Educational and cultural exchange programmes’, 16 July 2021

Cover image by Ash Gerlach on Unsplash