How to evaluate a school trip
By Enrichmark · Published 20 October 2026 · Reviewed 20 October 2026
Most trip evaluations are a feedback form handed out on the coach home. That tells you whether students enjoyed the trip. It cannot tell you what the trip changed, because there is nothing to compare the answers with. This guide sets out a method that can, in six steps. It works for a day visit, a residential or a trip abroad, in a UK school or an international one.
1. Decide what the trip is for
Before the trip is booked, write down the two or three things it should change for the students who go: their confidence, how they get on with each other, their interest in a subject, how they see a place or a problem. The Enrichment Framework's benchmark 7 asks schools to identify these outcomes and track them over time.
2. Ask the same questions three times
Ask the students the same short set of questions before the trip, just after it and some weeks later. Before gives the baseline. Just after shows what changed. Weeks later shows what lasted. Changing the wording between points makes the answers impossible to compare, so fix the questions first and keep them.
3. Match each student to their own answers
Compare each student's answers with their own earlier ones. A group average taken before and another taken after can move because different students answered, not because anyone changed. Matching can be done without names: each student keeps the same code at every point.
4. Add a comparison group where you can
Students change during a term whether or not they travel. A comparison group shows how much. Students in the same year who have not travelled yet can answer the same questions at the same times. The difference between the two groups is a fairer estimate of what the trip did.
5. Report only what the numbers can carry
Give every change with the number of students behind it and a margin of error. Leave out any group smaller than about ten students: its figures swing on one or two answers, and its students can be recognised.
6. Use the answers
Read the results with the staff who led the trip and, if an operator ran it, with them too. Decide what to keep and what to change for next time. Then run the same evaluation on the next trip, so the school builds a record across the year.
What this takes
Done by hand, this is three survey rounds per trip, reminders, matching and analysis. That is why most schools stop at the feedback form. A study of one international school's trip programme used the same before-and-after design to show measurable gains in how students saw their own abilities and responsibility; it is listed in the sources below. Enrichmark runs every step on schedule once a trip is added, and the report appears as each set of answers closes.