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Break out! School visits and educational opportunities

Far from simply being an excuse to escape from school surroundings, well organised school trips or visits are an excellent way to expand on educational opportunities by taking learning beyond the classroom.

There is currently a climate of speculation over their future, after recent prosecutions mainly involving outdoor adventure-style trips: at least one union is advising members against taking pupils on adventure trips. However, many pupils have had their horizons widened through being involved in all kinds of activities outside the school environment, particularly those children whose families aren't able to travel very far.

In February this year, a National Trust campaign promoting learning beyond the classroom uncovered research showing that nine out of ten teachers believe pupils go on far too few school visits, as much due to budget or timetable constraints as to caution.

Educational visits to indoor and outdoor venues are hugely rewarding for pupils and teachers. A good place to start for visiting ideas is English Heritage. As the national leader in heritage education, their website has up to date education pages with information on their free educational visits scheme, courses and free resource materials. They provide school groups with access to over 400 historic sites from medieval castles to Victorian houses. Well-known landmarks like Stonehenge, Hadrian's Wall, Kenilworth House and Osborne Castle all come under the English Heritage umbrella, and visits to sites like these are a great way for students to gain a better insight into aspects of British history.

Planning a visit

It is essential for teachers organising the event to liaise closely with an education officer (EO) at the venue when choosing and planning a successful school visit. Although a large organisation like English Heritage has eleven professional EOs around the country, not every organisation can boast this number of dedicated staff. However, the mark of a venue worth visiting is one that has at least one active and imaginative EO, or an outreach education system that works well with schools to offer the best visiting programme possible.

With health and safety issues forming an integral part of any school visit, working closely with EOs is crucial. They will be able to provide a large amount of important information before a visit, and will send out tips and information to teachers responsible for supervising the trip. These might be tailored to a school's specified curriculum requirements: visits can often be customised for individual groups through very specific activities or workshops. Usually a workbook of some sort will be sent to the main teacher responsible for booking the trip. This should be shared with any other adults involved as a way of letting everyone know what is expected of them.

The venue's expectations also stretch to the students, mainly in terms of their behaviour on the trip. With so many different types of venues offering school programmes, it's important to consider that there's a vast difference between acceptable behaviour in, say, a science museum with all its touchy-feely interactive delights, and a historical castle or place of worship.

Bookings for venues should be made well in advance — especially during busy times. In some cases, confirmation might take a while depending on the type of visit. Some organisations might be new to working with school groups, or it could be that a visit is being planned to a working building that has visiting restrictions.

If a time slot and itinerary for the visit are given by an education officer, it's essential to stick to them. Unavoidable delays like traffic or coach breakdowns are unfortunate, but confusion can result if there is more than one school group visiting a venue on the same day. Where that's likely, it's worth considering simple ID, such as colour-coded badges, as venue staff can then identify who is with whom.

Obviously it's not always possible to visit chosen venues in advance, but an EO should be able to tell teachers about good drop-off points, as well as availability and location of facilities like toilets, cloakrooms and eating areas.

Where to go?

The sky's the limit in terms of the type of learning opportunities on offer throughout the UK. Aside from the multiple options provided by institutions like English Heritage or the National Trust, other venues offer experiences that can very easily tie in with the national curriculum, or at least work as extensions of it.

Museums are a regular first choice for many schools as they offer well contained, easily accessible and often familiar means of engaging children in activities, with education departments that are comfortably geared towards working with primary, secondary and adult learners. One such venue that offers an extensive learning programme is Bradford's National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. Here, workshops in animation and storytelling through acting and spoken narrative are linked with English and literacy for Key Stage 2. Workshops in lighting and colour techniques are also available, as well as a range of other film and photography-related resources for all school ages.

The education departments at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Somerset House in London have recently merged to form a new Learning Centre with a team of gallery teachers offering an extensive programme of art and history-related workshops, guided tours, study days and courses for teachers and students, including those with special needs. Contact the centre on 020 7420 9406.

Even places like Cockpit Arts, a London-based provider of studio space for designer-makers has a Teachers and Students in Action programme whereby these groups work alongside Cockpit Arts designers to gain new craft skills and technical knowledge. The education office also offers projects with schools in Camden and Lewisham, concentrating on art and design courses for secondary-school children.

Places like these are just a fraction of what's on offer; teachers can also look to specialist charities and even businesses for all types of traditional and alternative activities for school groups. See also the Museums and galleries and Educational visits sections of TeacherNet, which list venues of interest to schools by region. And if you've visited a venue that you think has offered a particularly successful educational experience, contact us about it and we'll feature it on the site.

All in all, the organisation and experience of a school visit should be as safe and cohesive as possible, and should work as a good learning experience and day out for all involved.

Health, safety and training

Health and safety are obviously of the utmost importance on school visits. Visit TeacherNet's Health and safety on educational visits area to access the official guidance (and its more recent supplements) on good practice. These include the DCSF advice on how to train a teacher to be an educational visit coordinator (EVC), with an outline of the duties involved, including assigning competent people to lead or supervise a visit and organise parental consent.

Last updated: 31 July 2007