NST (company)

NST or the NST Travel Group is a British educational travel company, part of the Holidaybreak group of companies.

NST provides curriculum-focused tailor-made tours for primary schools, secondary schools and sixth form colleges, taking students to destinations across the UK, Europe and worldwide.

It is one of the leaders in educational travel and is the largest of its type in the UK, annually taking more than 4000 school groups on tours at home and abroad.

NST deals only with Schools and Colleges, arranging group student travel through the teachers. Parents are not able to deal directly with the company.

NST employs over 400 people, 240 of which are full-time, the remainder being seasonal workers. In the UK its Head Office is in Blackpool. An associate company, NST Ltd, based in Dublin, represents NST in Ireland.

Annual turnover is in excess of £50 million.

Tours and activities are devised and developed with teachers and subject matter experts providing a foundation on which tailor-made trips can be built. They are either subject-led or are general travel programmes relevant for groups of different ages, studying a wide and diverse range of subjects. The tours provide a strong educational and learning focus in a safe environment. They also do guided History and Religious Studies trips.

Tours to a huge range of destinations across the UK, including capital cities, centres of cultural interest, castles and historic sites, town, country and coastal locations. International destinations include:

Subject-specific itineraries include:

An NST tour gives students the chance to engage with local cultures, local peoples and their customs, to learn and develop new languages and to taste new and different food. This brings different elements to their education and provides an opportunity to learn outside the classroom, in ways that might not otherwise be afforded to them.

The company has two residential centres, one in the UK and one in France, bought specifically to encourage outdoors and adventure activities.

In 1967 Vin Craven, a former maths teacher from Millfield High School in Thornton, Lancashire founded NST as Northern Schools Travel. Craven identified an opportunity within the education sector to create and establish educationally-focused travel arrangements. Focusing initially on coach tours, the company later expanded into air travel to meet the growing demand for international educational experiences. The first trip overseas was to the Opal Coast in France.

...
Wikipedia