How much to charge for school educational visit?

[MarkW]

Morning all!

Has anybody here provided or procured educational visits to schools from external specialists, and if so what sort of fee is normal? The reason I ask is that over the last few years I have given a number of 'insect experience days' at my kids school in which I take in some of the critters from our lab (honeybees, bumblebees, parasitic wasps and predatory beetles, that sort of thing) and spend half a day teaching them about basic entomology. They absolutely love it, especially when they get to see baby bees emerging for the first time, parasitic wasps bursting Aliens-style out of the bodies of their aphid hosts, or predatory insects hunting down and devouring their prey.

I never made any charge for this, and figured that half a day of my time and the £200 investment in livestock was pretty small beer for enthusing the next generation of entomologists. However, some of the teachers (and many of the kids) have since moved on to other schools in the area, and I am now getting quite a number of requests for visits, all asking how much I charge. Obviously if I'm going to start doing more of this then I can't do it on the same basis that I have in the past, but only ever having charged big multinational companies for my 'expertise' I don't have any frame of reference for what would be reasonable to charge a school. Any ideas?

One option is that I put a pro-Brexit spin on it (sovereignty of British bees, no foreign queens, better border checks to stop non-native invaders getting in etc) and see if Boris can find a few billion quid to chuck at it.

[runningman]

Biscuits?

[geofferz]

Weirdest thread I've seen here in a long time.

[EX GASMAN]

Have you tried asking on a teacher's forum. I've not done anything like that but it looks a difficult balance, you need to make a profit but schools are strapped for cash so if you go too high they can't afford you. I would work out your minimum cost add your time at about £50 per hour and see if you get any bookings. If you get loads put the price up next time. Don't forget it will have to go through the books so allow for the cost of that and I think you will need public liability insurance as well. Good luck.

[Mr Fro]

...and see if Boris can find a few billion quid to chuck at it.

 

Well I have heard his a close friend of you family...

[Martyn850]

Apparently the going rate for similar around these parts (Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambs) is £180 for around two hours.

[Bender]

A supply teacher for a day will get more than £200. Especially down londinium, you have to work out what your cost per day is worth minus what ever discount your willing to apply for the fun your fetching to the kiddiwinks.

Then you have to see if they are willing to pay, I would sit down with the head from the school you have been to and just be frank, not frank Spencer though.

I'm costed out at x, would you be willing to pay y etc,

[Six30]

As much as you can get away with .

[Pie man]

I would doff my cap if you could do it for nowt, and your business can afford it, ..well why not. Too many greedy b@stards about today.

If you couldn't carry on going to them, could they not come to you

[MarkW]

Thanks guys.

I'm not looking to make a profit out of this and have always done it for free in the past. Well, at a loss in fact, because the bugs we take in ain't cheap: they range from £1 to £6 each, and you need 40-50 of them for a day's fun. The observation colony of bumblebees we take in is about £100, and whilst the honeybees are just borrowed from our apiary for the day we still have to prep them beforehand. The same goes for anything you want to show happening such as parasite emergence or moulting, where you have to have synchronised your cultures several days in advance to ensure you get a good number of them performing on the day. That all takes time from our lab staff, who are already run off their feet.

My curiosity about what sort of budget might be available is more a case of the other cool things we could do if the school had a little bit of cash to throw at it.

Having the kids visit our lab is a complete no-no due to the nature of the work we do: far too many nasties on site (our human pathogen store alone would give anyone trying to do a risk assessment for a school visit a heart attack) and we're just not set up for it.

I'll see about having a chat with some of the school heads when they're back after the summer.