Who can help?
As well as colleagues with whom you work closely, whom may be able to provide a great deal of help — particularly if you have an ‘LOtC team’ in place — there are other important sources to draw on.
Involving young people in planning and delivery is a crucial part of developing successful learning outside the classroom.
Consulting
This is an ideal opportunity for young people to take part in or direct a consultation process. The aim should be to collect information on young people’s experience of learning outside the classroom both within and outside the school/project, in:
- visits, including learning within the school grounds or local area, and extended schools activities on or off the school site
- activities provided by local youth organisations, including voluntary and community organisations and, local authority youth service provision, sports clubs, dance, theatre and arts organisations, and youth sections of organisations, such as the St John’s Ambulance and RSPB.
This survey should be a formal exercise, with the aim of logging each young person’s experience to identify those who do not currently experience a full range of provision. By involving young people in the survey design, you are more likely to capture the range of provision and experience available.
Mapping provision
Once a survey has been completed, young people can also be involved in the mapping of provision:
- where are activities taking place, at what time, and for what age groups?
- which young people are most involved, and which groups appear to be excluded from the process?
This requires both a geographical map to locate existing provision, and a ‘statistical map’ to identify both gaps and opportunities.
Ideally, this kind of consultation and mapping exercise should be repeated every few years.
Planning
Young people can also be involved in the planning and delivery of learning outside the classroom. They can:
- suggest, research and evaluate a range of venues
- be involved in planning activities including risk assessments (young people engaged in risk assessment are safer young people)
- assist with the delivery of activities.
Young people should be involved in developing a code of conduct for learning outside the classroom. See Practicalities for more details. This has a double advantage. It will improve understanding about the need for controls or restrictions on some activities, but it will also increase the legitimacy of the rules once an activity is under way.
Doing
The consultation and mapping process may identify young people with specific skills or experience. Learning outside the classroom offers an ideal opportunity for young people to lead in a properly structured and supervised setting, and for them to be accredited. Engaging young people in risk assessment is recommended. Although young people might perform some delegated, supervisory or planning tasks, staff must ensure that legal requirements relating to health and safety are adhered to at all times. See the Health and Safety overview.
Reviewing
A review involving young people, immediately or soon after the activity, is an ideal way to consolidate learning. In schools, the school council could do a more formal review of the school's provision for learning outside the classroom as a whole, since reviews carried out by adults are less likely to provide the same quality of feedback, and issues around bullying in particular are more likely to emerge from a peer-led process.
Within informal education, review is a critical part of the experiential learning cycle.
Parents, carers and other volunteers can be involved in a number of ways — for example as assistant leaders, facilitators, first-aiders, activity instructors, or, with some activities, as an appreciative audience. Some may have skills, qualifications and experience that they would be very keen to share with young people.
Parents’/carers' involvement will be most effective if they are involved in planning the activity, they clearly understand their responsibilities and they are well supported during the activity.
It is important to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of all staff involved are clear to parents, carers and other volunteers. This encourages, a collective sense of responsibility for issues such as safety and discipline-even though the steer on these matters should come from the group leader. Parents/carers or other volunteers should be taken on as supervisors only when the group leader is satisfied that they have the necessary competence.
All schools and other organisations should ensure that they have a clear policy that covers the eligibility, selection and terms under which any volunteers are recruited.
But please note: if parents/carers are assisting in an activity which also involves their own children do not place them in a position where their duty of care to the group might conflict with their parental role.
There are several different job titles for Advisers who can help you with planning learning outside the classroom:
- Adviser for Educational Visits
- Consultant for Educational Visits
- Learning Outside the Classroom Adviser
- Adviser for Learning Outside the Classroom
- Offsite Visits Adviser
- External Visits Adviser
- Enrichment Visits Adviser
- Outdoor Education Adviser.
Often Advisers will have experience in education, teaching or youth work and in leading high-quality visits. They will generally:
- have sufficient practical experience to provide generic and technical advice to a wide audience on a broad range of activities; including adventure activities and expeditions, as well as more local activities
- provide advice and support on risk management in a variety of contexts
- organise, facilitate and/or deliver effective training (e.g. for visit leaders)
- help to organise external support from specialists e.g. adventure activity technical advisers
- champion the benefits of learning outside the classroom for young people
- understand the legal framework within which Children’s Services employees work in relation to learning outside the classroom
- be able to interpret, refine and present national guidance at a local level
- monitor locally defined aspects of learning outside the classroom
- network e.g. with other advisers and with the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom
- develop systems to meet the local authority’s requirements for notification and approval
- have a good understanding of the legal responsibilities and powers of the local authority.
Anyone planning a learning outside the classroom activity needs to think about whether to organise the activity themselves, probably with help from immediate colleagues (see: People and Responsibilities), or whether to partner an external organisation.
The questions below may help you to decide:
- How can you most effectively achieve the objectives of the activity? Are there opportunities within easy reach?
- How complicated are the arrangements likely to be? Would it be better for you if an external organisation handled them?
- The age and abilities of the young people — how accustomed are they to learning outside the classroom?
- How experienced are you? Will it be more supportive for you to work with an external provider?
- Can you find an external provider that can offer what you are looking for? How will you judge that they offer high-quality experiences, with safety effectively managed? The Quality Badge scheme will provide advice here.
- Do you feel you could forge a successful partnership with them? See Where and When?