LAST UPDATE | 9 Jul 2024

AS THE SCHOOL year ended for my 15-year-old son, I started to receive the usual end-of-year texts from his school, ‘Please return the books by this date’, ‘School finishes on this date’, and ‘exams start at this time’.

I don’t usually pay too much attention to these texts; he is 15 years old and can manage his own time and responsibilities. I did, however, take notice when the school sent a text to us about the Transition Year school trip. It read, ‘This is a reminder that the deposit for the TY Italy trip is due by the 14 June’.

I take notice when it comes to the bills. I opened the travel company weblink, which belongs to the company lots of schools use for TY trips. I was told that the school trip would be to Italy in March for four days, and it would cost me €799 euro.

I was informed that if I wanted to secure a place for him, I needed to pay a deposit of €250 euro to hold a spot. While I am in a position now to afford this trip I was shocked by the cost of it, I had been on my own years ago with my son and I would never have been able to afford this back then.

Who loses out?

I was also a little worried about any students in our school who might not have the money to pay for the trip. When I asked my son if he knew any people who might not be able to afford the trip he said ‘No mam, I don’t know anyone — and anyway, mam, the kids who have no money are usually not allowed to do TY anyway, they are the ones who are in trouble!’.

For those who don’t know what TY or Transition Year is, it is like a gap year or a break year between the Junior and Senior Cycles. It is a year for students to access some work experience and to develop their vocational skills. Some schools encourage students to do charity work during TY or to develop business ideas.

In Ireland, 75% of schools offer TY and about 45,000 students take it up each year. Most of the parents I know, in my nice middle-class friend group, encourage their kids to do TY; they consider it a break from the stresses of formal learning, a chance for their teenager to grow as a person – hopefully.

Every school gets to decide (a) if they offer TY at all (b) what is included in TY and (c) who gets to do it – this is where the problems start. In my son’s school, for example, students must complete an application form stating why they want to do TY. Those students who are considered ‘naughty’ or who have been ‘in trouble’ are either offered a provisional place (depending on improved behaviour) or they are told outright ‘No — you must progress directly to 5th year’ — basically they are told we want you out of school as soon as possible so we are not letting you do TY!

In other schools, it’s not an application; it’s mandatory for everyone to do it. This isn’t ideal either, some students know what they want to do and want to get through school as quickly as possible. Some parents see TY as a waste of time, they worry that students will lose focus and don’t want their children to do it. Some other schools have a formal interview process to get in — the decision to offer students a place depends on spaces in the TY and the behaviour of the students.

In most cases, students must pass some sort of evaluation to do TY, they must be deemed ‘good enough students’ to get in. While I can understand that it might be harder to monitor students during this less formal year, the idea of selecting students based on their history and their behaviour seems cruel. And flawed.

If TY is supposedly in place to provide students with a ‘break’ from the formal classroom, then the students who would benefit most are those not doing well in the formal classroom. It seems counterintuitive to stop the struggling students from doing TY — in fact, I would go as far as to say that stopping students from taking part looks like a punishment system. Schools are just saying to students, ‘You were bad, so now you can’t enjoy school like everyone else’.

Prohibitive costs

I decided to post about my TY experience on my social media; I wanted to see what other parents thought and felt about the year and the costs associated with it. I have been inundated with messages since. Most comments have related to the extortionate fees that families are being forced to pay for the trips that are on offer to students in TY.

One lone mother wrote to me and said in her school the fee for her daughter to go skiing was €1500 euro, she told me she was going to have to get a credit union loan, so her daughter didn’t feel left out.

From the messages and from my research it seems that on average TY school trips range from €500 to €2,000 euro. Anecdotally, I’ve also heard that many families are feeling so much pressure to pay for these trips that they are willing to sacrifice their own family holidays or take out loans to ensure that their child does not feel the shame of being the ‘odd one out’.

I can attest personally to the hurt this can cause, as a poor kid I remember not being able to go on a school trip to Warwick Castle because my mum and dad wouldn’t pay the bus fee. I had to sit in the classroom all day with the two other students, who also couldn’t go, and feel the shame of being left out.

In this day and age, and with the money in our economy, no child should have to feel this type of shame. And no family should have to choose between their own holiday and their children’s TY trip.

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Should schools also be asking themselves what is really to be gained from these trips, at a time when the cost of living is so high and people are clearly under pressure? Are we also not supposed to be teaching our children about the challenges around climate change? Is there a better way to direct energy during the children’s TY experience? For TY students, learning, growth and a sense of belonging can be created in different, less expensive ways.

While I was outraged by some of the awful experiences families have had trying to pay for TY trips, I was also heartened by some lovely reminders of how great and good some of our schools are. There were many teachers and parents who reached out to me to tell me about the great care they experienced in their school, how there was a real emphasis on inclusion in many schools, and how teachers were working to ensure the TY trips were cheap and accessible to those who were struggling.

However, even if there are some good practices in place, I am of the view that if we are failing one child then we are failing them all, and the inconsistency and the inequity in TY seem to be failing families, especially those who are struggling financially.

In 2022, upon the launch of the reimagined senior cycle, Minister for Education Norma Foley said that she was committed to ensuring that TY “remains accessible and beneficial to all students”; for this goal to become a reality we definitely need to do more to ensure that ALL students can take part in TY, not just the ones who ”behave well’. We also need to do more to ensure that the experiences on offer in TY are not exclusive or exclusionary. Charging a lone parent €1,500 euro for her daughter to go on a four-day skiing trip flies in the face of equality. We can, and should, do better.

Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is Lecture of Digital Skills in the ALL (Assisting Living & Learning) Institute, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University. Her book, Poor is a stirring argument for the importance of looking out for our kids – on an individual, governmental, and societal level – of giving them hope, practical support and meaningful opportunities.