Australia or China for 15 days with 40 sixth graders?
 

In June, I'll visit China or Australia(with 40 sixth graders and 3 other teachers). I'm excited because I've never been to Asia or the South Pacific.

In China we would be in Beijin, Xian, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Suzhou.

In Australia I'd go to the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon.

I'm pouring over websites and guide books to no end. What would you choose?

stay home and go on your own....not 40 kids!!!

You're very brave...
I've never been to Australia but I have been living in Shanghai for nearly four years and I'd say China would be fantastic for your kids. There's so much to see that will be so DIFFERENT for them - Australia, while great for the obvious benefits, might not have the cultural mystique that China offers. Though, then you've got the language barrier in China. But Chinese people are friendly and very fond of children. The kids will have lots of opportunities to interact with locals.

Anyway: local bias. I'd choose China.

Best,
Sara

Australia - less pollution, safe drinking water.

What do you want the kids to get out of the trip? China would be a bigger eye opener.

Exactly. Assuming you and the children are of western culture, China will hold their attention from morning to night. With no slight to the people in Oz, I think the children would learn more, enlarge their perspective more, in China.

I would make one change to your itinerary and substitute northern Yunnan Province for Hong Kong or another city. There are so many outdoor things to do in Yunnan to use up their energy. Just having their pictures taken next to a yak or two might been worth a day's memories. From the Tibetan plateau in Zhongdian to the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain at over 14000 feet to the old city of Lijiang, they will see more different things than the other stops on your trip. All your other stops are big cities, and after a while, all big cities in a foreign land begin to look alike. Yunnan offers you wildflowers galore, easy (for children) mountain hiking above Dali, and visiting the newest and largest Buddhist shrine in China (the three Pagodas Park). Good luck, and I wish you were my teacher when I was in the sixth grade!

Have any of the teachers in your group been to any of the places before? Do any of the teachers speak any Chinese dialect? How many days do you have on the ground, not counting travel time? Where are you coming from? What is your budget? Are you working with any educational institutions in the PRC or Australia to assist you?

IMO to go to China or even Australia if no one in the group has ever been there before with 40 kids in tow, and no parents, is a bit of a recipe for disaster. More so in China, IMO where language will be more of an issue. If none of the adults have been to the PRC before, then you will be learning as you go along, which is not really a good way to be a chaperone, IMO. If you have never been to the Forbidden City, how can you efficiently lead a group of 40 kids there? How can you know how long to budget to see sites? How do you know which part of the Great Wall is better for kids? I would not be comfortable leaving it all up to a tour guide, especially as it seems you will be working with a guide you don't know, having never been there. In addition, while it is generally not issue to travel around the PRC without English, with a group that large you are going to need lots of special accommodation and attention (i.e. getting group access to the Forbidden City) that will require advance planning, and that is where language skills will come in. What will you do when one of the kids needs medical attention, which will invariably happen with a group that large (and there will undoubtedly be kids with peanut and other allergies). I believe you will need much more help than the people on this site, helpful as they are, to plan this trip. Liaising with the US Embassy for one, and the relevant Ministries of Education in the various provinces you are thinking of visiting, plus the revelation Ministries of Tourism would also be required. For Australia, you will not have the language issue, but I personally would not want to take a boatload of kids to the Great Barrier Reef if I myself had not been there previously and had at least some idea of what I was going to encounter in terms of water depth and temps, the types of boats the kids would be on, facilities that are available, etc. You have a huge responsibility here, you are not just traveling on your own, and I personally would want to have inspected a lot myself and not just relied on the word of travel agents or tour operators.

I cannot imagine the logistics of taking 40 adults to China, let alone 40 children, and also dealing with 80 parents who will all be trying to reach you by cell phone in the middle of your night (12-15 hour time difference). Do yourself a favour and enlist several sets of parents to join you. I can't even begin to imagine what jet lag will do to 40 children.

Depends on the 40 kids.

I've seen Westerner kids in China who are so spoilt, they didn't appreciate the differences in culture, trash-talked about local conditions, and generally behaved like the brats that they were. Incredible? yes, but not every kid benefits from overseas trips. It really depends on their own upbringing and whether they bring open minds to other cultures or not.

At least in Australia they will find people who speak the same language and have more or less the same cultural values.

On Fodors, people seldom point out the negatives, but for your own sanity, look at what kind of kids these are. You could come back a basket case with 40 kids having made endless and impossible demands on you for two weeks.

Some more things I should point out. June in Australia is winter time, and while that is of course a relative term, temps may be cooler than you would want. Sydney will only be about in the 50 Fs to low 60 F. While pleasant, it's not warm at all really, and you can also get a good bit of rain. Brisbane is not much warmer, although it is one of their drier months. Temps in the Great Barrier Reef will be in the mid 70s F and it can also be cooler; some people may not consider that beach weather. You may luck out and get a hot spell, but the odds are probably not with you.

For both Australia and the PRC you will need a visa for each traveler. For the PRC, a visa currently costs US$100 each. That price may come down next year, but that is the current price. The Australian visa currently costs US$70. You will need some time to obtain these for each student, and I don't know the rules regarding visas for children under 16 traveling without their parents. Please see www.china-embassy.org. and http://www.austemb.org/ for information. You will also need written permission from parents to leave the US and possibly to enter or leave other countries with children who are not your own, you will need to look into the rules regarding this. (These relate to child abduction laws). If the parents of any of your kids are divorced and share custody, you will need to make sure you have permission from both parents.

All the kids will of course need valid passports to travel outside the US, and you can't even begin to apply for a PRC visa or an Australian visa until they have these. I believe the Passport office is currently somewhat behind in their processing and is taking 9-12 weeks to issue passports, but they have been improving somewhat I understand. I think you need about 2 months for the PRC visa to be issued. That means with a June departure, you need the kids to start applying ASAP for their passports. There are many issues to consider in an overseas trip as you can see.

Based on your itineraries, I'm thinking you all will be on a guided tour?

If you are going with a good tour company experienced in taking young school groups, this might work, but I also would be inclined to limit your trip to 3 locations, not 5 as you have here.

Because IMO, I don't think you could do this any other way. I know from my own children's experience that the norm is an adult for about evey 5 kids, not 1 to 10.

You figure any one day you will have at least one kid sick, so one adult will have to stay back. In additon, you have to be prepared for the possibility that one kid might leave the country early or late and an adult will need to go with them at that age. Both times my (high school) kids wnet on school trips, this happened.

Australia might be easier from a language and health standpoint (clean water and food) but kids get sick just from anxiety and lack of sleep.

What do the parents think? Are all these kids coming no matter where the destination, or will the number depend on the approval of their parents. In that case, you might want to do a presentation of both locations and take a vote....

Where are you coming from?

I can see with high school kids this type of trip might be possible, with 12 year olds IMO that is a lot harder. The ratio above is more what I would consider reasonable and safe, especially if I were a parent.

Haven't been to China yet, but have been to Australia three times - twice in our summer, and once with kids (including a sixth grader.) Weather was ideal - not too cold at all.

I'm dying to go to China with my own family, but with other people's kids I would choose Australia - easier, safer, fewer health issues, awesome animal encounters, and much cheaper (especially this summer with the Olympics.)

My son, then 11, had to go to the emergency room in Uluru (Ayre's Rock) and the quality of health care was phenomenal, especially for such a remote area.

I would revise itinerary to make it more exotic and include more animal encounters - Maybe skip Brisbane and substitute the outback around Darwin - a two-day camping trip in Kakadu or Litchfield, then Uluru, ending in Sydney. (Let me know if you need recommendations for kid activities there.) You can get Qantas airpasses that allow three stops. School will be in session then and you could set up an e-pal situation, where kids correspond with Aussie students, then meet them and maybe spend a day at their school.

The advantage of Brisbane is they can go to Australia Zoo(Belonging to the late Steve Erwins family) and also Dreamworld. There is a good collection of native animals in both places and at Dreamworld they can hold some of them(Koalas). It is very easy to travel around Brisbane being a smaller city with a good train system.

Even though I think China would be a bigger eye opener, based off my own middle school teaching experience AND the fact that I cannot get my adult Caucasian friends to eat some Chinese food, I would vote for Australia. I think you would get less complaints and have less complications in terms of food/water/language.

I'm surprised, quite frankly, that the parents of 6th graders would allow their children to go on such an elaborate trip with a school group. Whatever happened to family vacations to the Grand Canyon? Maybe it's me, but I just can't relate.

The same query was posted on the Australia forum, with (as here) quite a few helpful responses, but (as here) the OP hasn't bothered to respond to questions, much less say "thanks". (In the event that thread was hijacked, but it didn't seem to matter.)

Maybe I'm being hypercritical, but the OP's clumsy use of language and misspellings suggests to me that this enquiry wasn't penned by a teacher. At least, I hope not. If I'm being unfair I'll be delighted for "paris_" to tell me so.

Actually, just the thought of taking 40 adolescents across the street, never mind to China, had me heading off in the direction of the drinks cupboard.

First year-- Visit China
Second year--Visit Australia

Why not?