Trips and visits are a key supplement to Academy life, providing opportunities to experience meaningful encounters, build character and important life-skills, as well as, growing students’ cultural capital. Our broad opportunities for trips and visits mean that ALL students can and will access such experiences during their time at Grace Academy Darlaston. The most amazing part of this is that for the majority of the trips and visits we offer, they are free for ALL students. The only exceptions to this are our residential visit, where students pay a discounted amount.
Some examples of visits that we do are Residential trips to experience outdoor/adventure activities, and to experience and emerge in different cultures, we have run and are planning to continue to offer our Year 7’s the opportunity to visit ST George’s House in Deveon, for a week of experiences, including surfing, abseiling, archery and much more! In the past we have taken students to France, Andorra and Germany.
We organise many reward-based trips to celebrate and recognise students’ character and effort (and not just their academic progress), go karting, the cinema and trips to sporting events such as Wembley to watch an England game.
We are proud to be very active within our local community, Social Action experiences such as community litter picks, delivery of care package’s, visits to residential homes, and the local town hall, as well as volunteering in local community events.
To enhance students’ academic comprehension, we organise many trips throughout the year to places, such as the theatre, local historic sites, museums or local places of worship. These are ran to solidify students knowledge and offer additional context to their learning. Being able to interact and immerse themselves in the experience is a great way to further develop their knowledge.
Trips such as University and Employer visits to raise student aspirations and provide students with an insight to the opportunities available to them that they may not have previously thought were possible.
In a nutshell our school trip programme is one of the many crucial strands to our character curriculum that offers lots of different benefits for our students. Not only do they provide an opportunity for pupils to learn outside the classroom, but they also help to develop their social skills, increase confidence, and encourage personal development. These encounters will support students in fostering positive communication skills, healthy and professional relationship.
