Education Service Working with schools to support young people's understanding of Parliament and democracy

A subsidy will be available to state schools making an Education Service visit to Parliament, when they telephone their booking to Parliament’s Education Service from 21 January 2009. It is not available for visits arranged directly through Members of Parliament.

This is a time-limited pilot project with a fixed budget: no guarantee is given that the money will be available when a particular school claims, and no liability is accepted for paying if the budget has been exhausted. The scheme will not be available after 21 May 2009.

The subsidy is a percentage of the travel costs incurred in making the visit up to a maximum sum per Band (see below).

A state school is defined as one listed as such on the Edubase database for England, the NGfL Cymru database for Wales, Scottish Schools Online, or the Northern Ireland Government Department of Education institutes database.

The subsidy is available only to schools from UK parliamentary constituencies, and is restricted to their own UK-resident students.

An eligible school may claim one subsidised trip in respect of one booking slot during the period of the pilot. A trip is a journey by a single party. If a school books more than one slot on the same day, the subsidy will be applied to a proportion of the travel costs in line with the proportion of pupils in the larger of the booking groups.

Eligible schools may claim a subsidy on the actual travel costs (eg train or coach fare) incurred by the group that visits (excluding individual journeys to reach the group at the start of the trip or at any other point). The travel costs do not include refreshments, accommodation, insurance, Congestion Charge, Low Emission Zone Charge nor anything other than a payment for the sole purpose of traveling. The actual travel costs are the amount of money paid, after any applicable discounts, refunds or other reductions.

The level of subsidy will be determined by the School Visit Assistance Band into which the school falls, and will be the percentage of its receipted costs for which that Band qualifies, up to the maximum for that Band.

Band B qualifies for a subsidy of up to 50%, with a maximum claim of £650. Band C qualifies for a subsidy of up to 75%, with a maximum claim of £1250.

A subsidy application form will be sent to eligible schools upon booking. Payment will be made after the trip has taken place, and after the scheme administrator has received a properly completed claim form, confirmation from the Education Service that the trip occurred and receipts for the journey. Schools should submit receipts within 30 days of the visit. It is the school’s responsibility to claim the subsidy and to hand in the receipts: the Education Service accepts no responsibility to prompt for this.

If a confirmed booking is cancelled by the Education Service and costs have been incurred with a travel provider, the school will be eligible to claim the relevant percentage in line with its Band of any travel costs that cannot be refunded. No subsidy will be paid for a visit cancelled for any other reason.

All subsidised visits remain subject to the Education Service’s normal terms and conditions. The subsidy does not confer any additional rights beyond the right to claim the subsidy.

The primary purpose of the trip should be a visit to Parliament through the Education Service. While other activities during the trip are not excluded, they should not add to the travel costs. The subsidy may be withheld if this happens.