Dear Parent Carer.
First of all, I hope you are all well and managing under the current conditions, I realise it is an unsettling time for you and your family. Secondly thank you for your patience and understanding with this debacle and whilst it is no consolation, please be assured that we are not the only school trying to work through this with travel companies. At the heart of this process are legal barriers and small print that enables travel companies and insurers to baffle us with jargon and terminology that slows down the process of getting you back what you paid.
As of 16.04.20 – Equity Travel have asked us to consider that we:-
- Cancel the trip and accept the conditions of cancelling. Each family will lose money and personally, I’m not prepared to accept that.
*please note this is very different than Equity Travel cancelling the trip which they have not done so yet*
- Accept a credit note for the value of the trip and apply that a later date. I have some serious concerns about this given the ever changing circumstances and the long list of variables that need to be considered.
A few examples might be things like :-
- Given the news of the lockdown extension it is unlikely that even by October, we will back to normal.
- A pupil who is in S3 this year will be sitting SQA exams in May 2021 therefore a trip at that time would not be recommended.
- I’m sure families would prefer to get the balance back now (or as soon as possible) rather than defer to next year.
Conclusion
My recommendation would be that we wait. In the interim I have been in contact with the City of Edinburgh Travel team and legal team to explore the timescale about a how we ensure each family gets a full refund. As I mentioned above I’m not prepared to accept that any family loses out here, unfortunately a resolution will not be imminent and as of today, I have no definitive answer to this but I hope to have an update by early next week.
Best wishes,
D Young
Headteacher