What is the best size of group for a school tour?

There is no single right answer to this question, but if I throw a couple of ideas in for you to consider, I hope it will help you get it right.

If you are planning a tour to tie in with your external examination studies, then the size of your cohort will to some extent determine the number you might take.  If you have only half the ideal number in a year group, then you might combine the two GCSE years or the AS/A2 years.

If you are going to travel by coach, then somewhere from 30 to 45 pupils is ideal, as this spreads the fixed costs well, leaves enough room for accompanying adults to have a double seat each, and enables you to use readily-available coaches ranging from 38 to 53 seats.

A larger group might use a double-decker coach, but I have always felt that while these are fine for a journey to and from a single destination, they are not so good for multi-centre tours.  Every stop takes a long time just to offload and re-load the coach, but more than this, the people downstairs are cut off from those on the upper deck and some of the group ethos is lost.

From time to time, when I have organised tours from groups between 70 and 100 in number, I have used two single-deck coaches and this can work very well, provided visits are staggered.

I'll add some thoughts on group sizes for air tours in my next post.