School defends decision to have sixth form trip to Skyrim

Skyrim: everything you need for a school trip plus dragons.

Clive Morris, headteacher of Harold Shining Future Academy and IT Achievement Haven (formerly Harold comprehensive), has defended the school’s decision to replace the annual sixth form residential trip with a week playing Skyrim the phenomenally popular PC and console game.

“School trips have changed beyond recognition over the last ten years,” he said. “In my day you were abandoned to a random family in a crappy French town no more than an hour from the nearest ferryport where you spent the whole week hating the food and fancying a hairy French lass then returned home with a bag full of Hollywood chewing gun and a flick knife. This will no longer do and besides which HSFAIAH has been banned from all international ports in the UK for some years now.”

“Skyrim offers a huge range of experiences that’ll let students to get involved in a broad curriculum of activities. Culturally there’s the Burning of King Olaf festival and we are planning a nature excursion across The Reach as well as taking the opportunity to sit in on the council at High Hrorthgar and witness first-hand how politics is conducted at the very highest level.”

Some parents have raised concerns over their children sitting around the sixth form common room playing a video game for a week. Clive Morris says that they don’t need to be worried.

“There are many lessons to learn in Skyrim from the patience of grinding for perks and the economics of pillage and barter to the reaction of Skyrim’s horses to physics.”

“Best of all it costs a fraction of an ordinary school trip and when the little sods fight, drink, steal and have dubious encounters no one’ll get arrested and no one’ll call the press. Which will be a first.”

If the visit Skyrim is a success then the school intends on visiting  Azeroth and New Eden in the near future.

“I think we are, for once, ahead of the curve.” said Mr Morris. “Soon all school trips will be virtual now the cost and risk-factor of taking students off the school premises is becoming increasingly prohibitive. In some ways it’s a shame because kids are experiencing less and less of the real world. I used to be an adventurer myself but then I took an arrow in the knee and went into teaching.”