I flew on the first one of these schemes which was run through Cabair as Heliphotos. The kids actually get a lesson from the teacher/photographer and the pilot. The lesson covers two parts of the national curriculum, one about mapping (part of the job was to provide aerial photos of the school) and the other part was about flight and how flying machines work.
We went away on tour for 5 days at a time. Earliest take off was 09:00 and last landing 16:00. If you could stand a thousand screaming brats a day the job was great fun.
This thread has just got me digging through old flying photos and I've just found a pic from one school where they had a class of blind kids. The teacher and myself did a lunchtime lesson for them where they could touch the A/C and understand by feel what the aircraft was like. The pic is of me and a 9 year old who had just gone blind due to cancer, he is laughing hugely in the sunshine and enjoying the day. His mum sent me the pic with a note of thanks the following week. I met him on the Monday and he died on the Wednesday night, the cancer won as they had known it would.
Some of the schools were incredible. Dire areas with obvious poverty. Often they were the best disciplined kids and the best teachers. Other schools with everything going for them were utter c
.
Nobody gets ripped off with this scheme. The annual class photos paid for the helicopter (just) and the kids got up close to an aircraft and learned something they had to learn an a different way. Much as I complained about it at the time (anyone who knows me knows I complain a lot anyway) I enjoyed it and always felt lifted at the end of the week.