Your first school ski trip? An academy shares their experience and tips

Educational visits coordinator Jan French said: “The trip was a total triumph from start to finish. Every single one of the students represented the academy impeccably.”

Before the trip, the school arranged sessions at Tamworth Snow Dome so that pupils could have lessons with a qualified instructor and get the experience of taking the button ski lift and wearing the boots and other equipment. This provided the students with invaluable practice meaning they could excel on the slopes in Italy.

Jan added: “Our school motto is ‘pushing our boundaries to achieve more’ and it is safe to say that every single student fulfilled this pledge; all the students who began the week on the nursery slope progressed to confidently navigating blue and red slopes by the end of the week, despite challenging snow conditions.”

Jan and trip leader Andrew Baxter have shared some of their top tips from what they learnt from the 2022 trip.

Our tips before your ski trip:

• Plan as many trips to the nearest snow dome as possible before you go to enable the pupils to experience skiing before they get on the actual slopes. This gives them a feel for wearing ski boots too.
• Launch before Christmas so that parents/grandparents can buy ski gear for the pupils.
• Give a long lead time - we try to give parents 18 months to pay, to be as inclusive as possible.
• Run a parents meeting at least eight weeks before you go, and collect in the passports, EV4 (Educational Visits consent) and behaviour contracts at that point.
• Make sure you emphasise the deposit is non-refundable, it saves a lot of discussions later.
• Explain to parents that the pupils will not be allowed their phones whilst on the slopes or in their rooms. This is to ensure they don’t break / lose their phones whilst skiing, but it is mainly to ensure that if an incident occurs, the staff are in control of who finds out and when.
• Ensure the ski company has all the correct shoe sizes in advance to minimise time spent getting boots and skis prepped when you arrive.

During the ski trip:

• Take plenty of water and extra snacks for the coach journey if not flying.
• Make sure students have jumpers etc. in their hand luggage, not just in the hold! We travelled through France in sub-zero temperatures overnight.
• Take staff with a range of ski experience. Ideally take more staff than you need.
• Take plenty of photos and videos and send to parents via Twitter (now called X). We set up a Twitter account specifically for the trip.
• We added in extra activities such as night-time tobogganing, and a crepe evening which went down extremely well. And end the week with a disco!