UK-France school trips at risk of being axed as Brexit checks come in

A post-Brexit scheme to cut red tape for French children coming on school trips to Britain is at risk of being cancelled because of new entry requirements being introduced by the UK, the travel industry has warned.

The new rules for French school trips were introduced in December 2023 following a summit between French President Emmanuel Macron and then UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak which resulted in a deal to address a sharp drop-off in visits caused by Brexit.

The change allowed French children to travel to Britain using national identity cards and their non-EU classmates without the need for a visa. It was intended to cut costs for schools that complained that obtaining visas and passports for short trips to Britain had become a bureaucratic nightmare.

However, the scheme is now in peril from the UK’s new Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme (ETA), which comes into force on April 2 2025. The policy will require all EU visitors to register before travelling to the UK, a process that requires children to have a passport and is therefore not compatible with the French school trips scheme.

The EU is introducing a similar scheme, the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), for UK travellers entering Europe from mid 2025.

Valérie Boned, president of Les Entreprises du Voyage, the main trade body for travel agencies in France, wrote to UK home secretary Yvette Cooper on October 8 asking if the programme for French school groups would be retained.

The group said it had not received a reply from the Home Office by late last week, adding it was urgently seeking clarity because trips for spring 2025 were being booked now. 

“The sooner we manage to clear the situation, the less impact it will have on the number of school trips for 2025,” Boned wrote in her letter, seen by the Financial Times. 

Home Office officials said the implications of the ETA policy for the French schools travel rules were “under review” but declined to provide further details. 

French government officials said they had “expressed concern” to London over how the ETA programme would impact the school trips scheme, which had delivered “major progress” in reinforcing Anglo-French connections. 

“We are in close contact with our British counterparts so that it remains fully operational,” they added.

The threat to the scheme comes as the UK and the EU work to “reset” their relationship following Labour’s election victory in July. However, both sides are already at odds over a proposed “youth mobility scheme” that would make it easier for young people to live and work overseas.

Sir Keir Starmer has repeatedly ruled out such a scheme despite pressure from pro-EU groups in the Labour party pushing for a deal but some ministers believe that “landing zones” through the negotiations will come into view next year. 

Ministers in the previous Conservative government hinted that the French school trips scheme, if successful, could be extended to other EU member states.

According to data from Les Entreprises du Voyage the introduction of the group travel scheme had led to a 30 per cent increase in school trips to the UK, which it said were still 60 per cent below 2019 levels when the scheme was introduced in December.

Edward Hisbergues, director of PG Trips, a leading school trips travel company, said a deal to preserve the scheme was “essential” to avoid another drop-off in school trips to the UK.

A survey of over 300 French teachers by PG Trips found that more than three-quarters of teachers said removing the new scheme would make it less likely that they would take groups to the UK.

Isabelle Regiani, a teacher at the Jean Jaurès middle school in Sarreguemines said that requiring supervised groups of 15-year-old teenagers to go through the ETA process for a short trip to England was “utter nonsense”.

“Colleagues from the north of France who used to cross the Channel for a day with their pupils won’t do it any more because of the tremendous paperwork. We dearly hope the British government will reconsider the situation,” she added.