The Daily Mail has decried French schools after it emerged many are now shunning trips to the UK in favour of Ireland.
Due to the increased bureaucracy of post-Brexit travel to the UK – which includes EU visitors needing to show a passport as opposed to a national identity cards, which many French students don’t have – some headteachers have shifted their focus to Ireland for simplicity.
Some French pupils from third countries also need a visa to enter the UK – which can cost €118 and require families to travel to major cities to collect.
With 7.7 per cent of France’s population being from third countries, this presents a significant headache for schools and one that they didn’t have before Brexit.
Articulating the problems faced by the sector, Didier Rys, head of Vauban Lycée in Aire-sur-la-Lys in northern France, told French publication La Voix du Nord the new system was “onerous”.
He said: “Because of Brexit, it’s too restrictive and onerous to go to our English neighbours.
“You need a passport for each pupil, which is an additional cost for families.”
He added that Ireland was, therefore, more attractive as “they speak English and you don’t need a passport”.
Speaking to the Times, Edward Hisbergues, director of UK school trips organiser PG Trips, said the new process was like the “Hundred Years War”.
He said: “The families travel to the visa application centre and that can take an enormous amount of time and money if you live in a small village in the Dordogne or somewhere like that. They pay for the visa application but they don’t get their money back if it is refused. It’s very dissuasive.
“[The Home Office] seems to think that these pupils are going to stay in the UK illegally, but we send 15,000 pupils a year and I’ve never known any not to come back. What sort of image does this give of the UK?
“We are in 2023, not 1400. It’s a little bit as though they think they are still in the Hundred Years’ War.”
