The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom Interview

Who are the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom and what do you do for schools?

The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom are a national charity set up in 2009 to ensure that every child has the opportunity to experience the world beyond the classroom walls as an essential part of their learning and development. We support schools by helping them to integrate learning outside the classroom into the curriculum so it is more than just a once a year school trip, it is something that is happening on a frequent, continuous and progressive basis. We have an accreditation for schools called the Learning Outside the Classroom (LOtC) Mark which helps them to do that and we also provide CPD and free online guidance for schools

An interview was conducted with the Chief Executive of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom Elaine Skates at Safeside at Eastside, a LOtC Quality Badge venue.

What brought you to the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom?

In addition to being the Chief Executive of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom, I am also a parent, a governor of a school and I volunteer for the Scouts. When I am out and about with my own children I notice the impact visiting cultural venues or natural spaces has on them, from their learning to their self-confidence. When I talk to teachers I realise that in this day and age not every child gets those opportunities. All the time I hear about children who have never visited the zoo, the seaside, a museum or art gallery and I find that quite shocking. 1 in 3 children in the UK have never built a sandcastle and 59% have never visited a farm. So what motivates me is that I want every child to have these opportunities and I think that accessing these opportunities through school is the way of achieving that.

What does the LOtC Quality Badge tell trip planners about a venue?

The Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge is a national accreditation which recognises providers of school trips offering good educational quality and safety around their educational provision. If a teacher chooses a venue that holds the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge, from a museum or art gallery, through to an adventurous activity centre or a field trip overseas, they know that the safety and the educational quality is in place and that it has been checked by our assessors. It also ensures that the provider is conducting robust safeguarding and child protection procedures which are communicated to all their staff. So it gives teachers assurance around the risk management process and it also helps them to cut red tape.

What would you describe as the major considerations of safe trip planning?

The first thing is don’t start the planning process with a risk assessment, learning should be always at the heart of planning a learning outside the classroom experience. Think about what you are trying to achieve for your young people, what their needs are and what the learning objectives are. The second thing is to ensure that the time spent planning the activity is proportionate to the activity itself. If you are taking children out into the school grounds to do a little bit of bug hunting and it is taking you half a day’s work to do the risk management, that is not sensible or proportionate, so focus on real risks not paperwork. The third thing I would say is to approach your risk management as a team because a risk assessment document should not be something that just sits on your server and no one ever looks at. It is a working document and the best way to communicate that to your team and to your volunteers is to involve them in that planning process so that they can react better during the day of the visit.

Have the safety considerations of school trips changed in recent years?

When we were set up in 2009 and the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge was launched schools were very concerned about risk and fear of litigation and I think we have actually moved on quite a lot since them. Nowadays when schools talk to us about the barriers of planning learning outside the classroom, their concerns are very much around time and funding. Schools know that learning outside the classroom meets their objectives but we need to do lots more work in trying to get that over to schools as much as we can.

Tell us about a recent initiative or measure by the CLOtC which is meeting these challenges?

The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom is the lead organisation in the Learning Away Consortium. Learning Away was originally an action research project which worked with 60 schools over a five year period and it identified that residential experiences have massive impacts in terms of pupil’s attainment, engagement in learning, relationships and personal development and resilience. We are trying to communicate that to schools through the Brilliant Residentials campaign. We want schools to look at the resources on the Learning Away website which not only explain to them about the benefits of residential experiences but use the learning from the project to inform schools about how they can get more value for money and more impact from those experiences. I would urge schools to look at the free resources on the Learning Away website.

Some sector professionals describe the school trip as an undue risk, how would you counter this?

To anyone who thinks that school trips are too risky, I would ask them about the risks of not taking children outside the classroom for learning, the risks of not expanding their horizons and the risks of not helping them to achieve all they can. I would also ask them about the risk to the wellbeing and the physical health of those young people and the risks of not preparing them with the skills they need for real life and for employment.

To schools that are concerned about the risk to themselves of taking children on a school trip and something going wrong, I would reassure them with the knowledge that school trips are really safe. The risks that young people will experience in their own homes or when they are driving around on the roads, far exceed the risks that they will experience on a school trip. As long as you plan the school trip effectively and you are using venues and providers who you know are of good quality, perhaps because they hold the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge, if anything does go wrong you will be recognised as having done everything possible. Risk is part of life and you are going to be making those young people safer by giving them the skills to manage real work risks for themselves.

What is an example of the combination of the benefits of outdoor learning and good health and safety practice?

The venue where we are today, Safeside, is the ideal illustration of those aspects. It is part of the preventative programme of the West Midlands Fire Service and it helps young people to learn in a controlled way about how to keep themselves safe around fire, water, road and the home. It is an excellent example of how learning outside the classroom gives children the opportunities to learn about risk in the real world in a very controlled and safe way.

What are the top three trip planning mistakes you most often encounter?

The first thing is teachers who don’t think about the learning objectives and therefore don’t derive the most benefit from the opportunities that they are providing. A major piece of advice for schools is don’t just do what you did last year. Think about learning outside the classroom as part of the whole programme of experiences you offer as a school and how it integrates into learning back inside the classroom.

The second mistake we see quite commonly is that schools don’t evaluate their learning outside the classroom provision. That is a problem because when teachers are trying the make the case for taking children outside the classroom again, it is a real advantage to be able to talk about the benefits of that provision and the impact it has had in the past.

The third mistake that schools sometimes make when they are planning educational visits is that they are not always inclusive and opportunities are only offered to the children whose parents can afford it. That is a great shame because often the children that are going to benefit the most from those experiences are those disadvantaged students whose parents can afford it the least.

Is it important that LOtC experiences are brought back and explored in school?

It is important for two reasons. Firstly for the pupils. It is important that there is a link between what they have learnt on the visit and their learning inside the classroom. It can enthuse their learning in the classroom and you can really use that educational visit as a starting point to build on the pupils skills and knowledge that they have learnt on the day. Secondly for the staff. It is important that staff come back and evaluate what has gone well during the visit and maybe what’s not gone quite so well, so that as a team they can learn and can improve next time.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE COUNCIL FOR LEARNING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM