TBH:I think it's time that secondary schools tightened their belts when it comes to school trips. The nation is reining in costs, cutting back on overseas holidays and travelling on a budget. Yet in my daughter's school this year they are proposing a skiing holiday that will cost well over €1,000. I have spoken to other parents who are sending their children to fee-paying schools and they are being asked to fork out hundreds of euro on city breaks to places like Barcelona and Greece for their teenagers. Of course, being teenagers they want to do what their friends are doing and there's huge pressure coming from peers.

I have no interest in sending my daughter skiing. For the cost of that trip I could take the whole family away for a week. I could pay for a year’s private language tuition for her. Skiing is not a life skill.

I know readers will ask why I don’t just refuse. I might, but if I do, she misses out on the school tour, which is a worthwhile exercise. I just don’t see why it has to be a no-expense-spared luxury tour when most Irish people either can’t, or won’t, spend that kind of money anymore.

I worry about the message that private schools are sending to our children by continuing to act as if there is no recession. In three years my daughter will finish school. She is not entering an Ireland of ski trips and city breaks. The economy here is likely to grow very slowly and in the meantime dole queues are lengthening. She will go to college, I’m sure, but sooner or later she will have to face the real economy and make a living. The expectations that her school are creating will give her quite the land on graduation.

I have always wondered about the educational merit of these trips, but even if they can be justified on cultural grounds, why can’t the schools organise trips the same way everybody else does nowadays? Low fares, no frills and budget accommodation? If my daughter chooses to travel as a student that’s exactly the level of luxury she can expect so it might as well start now.

The schools argue that on these trips away kids mature, they bond with the classmates and teachers and they learn something about themselves.

There’s something in that I’m sure and I’d like her to have that experience.But I see no reason why those lessons could not be learned on a holiday in Ireland, which would be a great deal cheaper and would put money back in the Irish economy at least. The idea surely, is to get out of the school environment. What’s wrong with Achill Island or the Ring of Kerry?

By going on a €1,200 skiing trip she may learn how to order a cup of coffee in French and get bit of fresh air. However, by insisting on these overpriced and cossetted school tours the schools are missing a trick.

They could use these trips to teach the kids valuable lessons about the real economy, the reality of travel for most people and how to rough it a little.