You may be considering a school trip with a focus on dramatic art or sports studies.
These are becoming increasingly popular, but the choice of location is also of vital importance if your students are to get the most out of the experience.
The locations
The school trip oriented towards sports tours or the dramatic arts is now an established reality and one that is increasingly familiar to education professionals. In theory, the only thing that one might imagine is worth concentrating on is the quality of the coaching available [though, of course, things such as accommodation and catering will also figure highly]. In practice, however, other factors come into play.
It is a simple fact of life that young students sometimes struggle to extend their concentration over lengthy periods of time. Doing the same thing day after day, however much they may enjoy it, can quickly become tedious for them and that might spell trouble for tour leaders and care providers.
That is why it might be advisable to think carefully about locations that are positioned in a rural isolation with little else of interest within easy travelling distance. Even if the facilities are world-class, students on a school trip need diversion. You can only get so much mileage out of asking them to keep contemplating the surrounding scenery, so having interesting things to do in the locality is critically important.
Destinations
For example, some study centres of this type are based in Catalonia. Part of Spain, this semi-autonomous region has several major city centres of tourist interest such as Barcelona, Tarragona and Gerona. In addition to those great cities, it also boasts a host of other cultural exhibits and it is difficult to imagine that some of them would not be of interest to many students.
Another illustration is offered by Holland. Not only is this very geographically convenient for access from the UK, it also has a vast range of attractions that can be used to give students a break from their coaching. Examples might include canal rides in Amsterdam, tours of the Anne Frank Museum, or visits to some of charming smaller Dutch towns with their surrounding windmills.
Some such tours can also be based in or around Paris. There is little more that can be said that has not already be documented a thousand times about the attractions of this wondrous city, such as the Eiffel tower, the Louvre and Montmartre.
The basic point is that trying to constrain a group of young people together in one location for an extended period of time isn't likely to yield the best results on any school trip focused on improving sporting performance or awareness of the dramatic arts.
Getting out and about is important and necessary in order to break up the monotony.
Looking at the centre of excellence itself is, naturally, important, but perhaps needs to be coupled with some broader thinking about the background location for any school trip.
