We are very fortunate in the staff we have at Stratford Girls’ Grammar School, and, as a result of their dedication and enthusiasm, we are able to offer students fantastic opportunities to take part in a very wide range of expeditions. We believe that these add hugely to the educational experience of the students, challenging them to move outside their comfort zones, broadening their horizons in a very literal sense, and helping to develop cultural understanding as well as global citizenship.

These trips start close to home in Year 7, with the July residential that we encourage all Year 7 students to take part in – generally to a PGL outdoor activity camp in the south-west of England. In the middle years of the school, there are the language exchanges to France, Germany and Spain, offering penfriend opportunities and the chance to experience the culture of these countries first-hand by living with a family. And in our July Activities Week, a number of cultural trips to Europe are available for students in Years 8 to 10: to Spain and Germany, to classical sites such as Rome or the Bay of Naples, and in some years, to Russia. In addition to Geography and Geology field trips, linked to GCSE and A-level courses, and including Iceland in the itineraries, other subject departments offer trips abroad, too: to Berlin, with History, for instance; tours with Music or Drama to Paris, Tuscany or New York; and visits to Washington and New York with Economics, Politics and History. The Science Department have taken research-based trips to Madagascar and Costa Rica, and one to South Africa is in the planning; while the PE Department organise regular ski trips to Austria for the younger students, as well as long-haul sports tours to Australia or South Africa. For many years we ran World Challenge expeditions – to places such as Sri Lanka, Namibia, Brazil, and South Africa – and in the last five years we have taken three trips to India: cultural visits to the Delhi, the Himalayas and the Ganges, that encourage the students to explore their responses to this amazing country through creative writing. Lists of recent trips and trips in the planning are given below, and the photos below give a flavour of what is on offer.

 School Trips in the Planning

We depend on the goodwill (and energy!) of staff  for all of these trips to run - as well as being able to recruit enough students to each one to be economically viable - and so there is no guarantee that all of these will run. However, these trips are currently all in various stages of planning:

Activities Weeks 2018

 
Other annual residential trips - mainly abroad