20/07/2023

 Dear families, 

InterParents has been actively involved in the reorganization of the obligatory school trips in the European Schools. As you have read in our previous communications from July 2022, March and June 2023, we have since the beginning expressed our serious concerns with the whole procedure and offered different solutions. Exactly one year ago we asked the Office of Secretary General of the European Schools (OSGES) to either change the approach or postpone the implementation of the outsourcing of the organization of the obligatory school trips by one year. Unfortunately, both our proposals were refused by OSGES because of the obligation to comply with the Financial Regulation as decided by the Board of Governors (BoG) in December 2021. 

The InterParents School Trips Working Group has been working hard throughout the whole school year to make parents’ voice to be heard, sending emails and letters to OSGES and other stakeholders, giving interventions in the Joint Teaching Committee (JTC), Budgetary Committee (BC) and BoG meetings, as well as during the meetings held with OSGES, stakeholders (including teacher and director representatives) and Denatravel. 

We are extremely pleased to let you know that this week Secretary General of the European Schools has informed InterParents about OSGES decision not to renew the framework contract with Denatravel which will therefore expire on 27 October 2023. This decision concerns all six lots (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg). 

The decision has been taken after intensive internal and external consultations which also included OSGES lawyers and the Directorate-General for Budget (DG BUDG) of the European Commission. 

The Secretary General’s intention was to respect the decision of the Board of Governors. However, the envisaged most important amendments of the contract faced legal and factual constraints which could not be overcome, something the InterParents School Trips WG had brought to the attention of OSGES already in May 2023. 

The OSGES will exchange with the schools’ management about the practical impact of this decision in the coming days. 

On behalf of the InterParents School Trips WG, we will send a letter to the Secretary General requesting a revision of the Board of Governors decision about the school trips, underlining that even if the school trips are part of the school budget for transparency purposes, given that they are paid by private money, the EU public tender procedure requirements should not be applicable to the school trips’ organization. The schools should be able to freely choose the best service provider for the school trips based on key criteria such as pedagogical value, value for money, safety and security for all pupils. 

As always, we will keep you updated about any further developments. 

Thank you for your confidence and have a nice summer everyone! 

The InterParents School Trips WG 

2/5/2023

As previously mentioned, our president Reet Escribano is the lead of the InterParents school trips working group and one of the InterParents delegates to OSG School trips WG. At the beginning of March, InterParents School trips WG sent a letter to the Secretary General of the European School and to the attention of the Budgetary Committee expressing their regret that parents recommendation to postpone the implementation of the new organisation of school trips and explore alternative approaches following the failure of the initial procurement procedure was declined by the OSG in July 22. InterParents called the attention to the very poor but expensive service provided by Denatravel requesting the OSG to take following actions:

• In compliance with art. II.18.1 c) terminate the FWC with Denatravel due to the contractor’s failure to implement the FWC and non-compliance with substantial contractual obligations.
• Clearly communicate to the schools that they can use local trusted contractors in the interim.

In a subordinate position,

• Not to renew the FWC with Denatravel according to art. I.3.5.
• Clearly communicate to the schools that they can use local trusted contractors in the interim. 

In addition, it was requested that the OSG school trip working group reconvenes in order to consider other operating models that take the extra budgetary concerns into account.
Finally OSG was asked to track the value for money and performance of those trips where Denatravel is involved.

As a consequence, the OSG School trips working group was reconvened and the meeting was held on 29/03/2023 where parents explained once again all the concerns about the new organisation of the school trips and the problems with the travel agency Denatravel.

Parents expressed further concerns and made further proposals to be taken into account in case the collaboration with Denatravel will continue. 

• In relation to cancellation insurance, InterParents stressed that the cancellation policy for sickness should be better indicated and explained in Denatravel’s offers because the current cancellation policy indicated in the offers foresee that 50% is lost at the moment of issuing a specific contract (usually 4-5 months before the departure) and 100% is lost one month before the departure.

OSG confirmed that there is insurance for the cases where a child cannot attend the trip because of illness.

• Seeing the number of issues Denatravel has had in dealing with just a few trips and schools – do they have the right resources in the right places to manage for all of our schools going forward?  It might be better to phase in slower and ensure they are delivering on what Denatravel is doing now before expanding to all schools.
• Reimbursement for poor quality trips? Under what conditions can OSGES reclaim money from Denatravel? 
• Is the new organisation really reducing the workload and responsibility for teachers?  The experience and comments acquired from teachers so far shows the opposite. Who is responsible at school for checking the compliance of the offers.

OSG confirmed that they will have a very close look at all the complaints and further proposals presented by parents, send during the month of April Denatravel a message calling their attention to their contractual obligations and further organize a meeting with Denatravel, directors, teachers and parents representatives on 10/05/2023. 

Last week our school management informed AMPA MC about Denatravel’s second answer to the schools’ complaint about the P5 Sierra Nevada ski trip and the Burofax response sent by the school to Denatravel on 18/04/2023 which we have shared with P5 parents via their representatives.

And finally, we have received very little feedback about S4 and S6 trips from parents (and no feedback or survey results from the school) so we hope these trips were better organised.

We will keep you updated about any further steps.