Outdoor Learning

Mark Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Benton. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) for securing this important debate. Perhaps I should declare an interest: like my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), I used to be a teacher. I was a teacher for 12 years and am still a member of my union, the NASUWT.

I very much endorse what other hon. Members have said, which is that this is not simply a debate about rural areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire has a proud record of championing rural areas, and I concur with him on many of those issues, but he was right to make the point that outdoor education is about urban schools as well.

I start with a couple of anecdotes. One of the most successful field trips I ever organised involved leading a group of children from a deprived school in north Devon down to the city of Plymouth. It was an excellent day’s work that examined the architecture, the effect of the Blitz, the new buildings that went up in Plymouth, the naval town and the economy of the area. Those children would not have experienced that—it is a long way from Barnstaple to Plymouth—had we not given them the opportunity.

Closer to home, I think of the scheme that we embarked on in Powys. We set up a partnership scheme between a local organic farm and our school. We acquired a plot of land and visited each term. Every child in that small village school visited the farm every year, nurtured the plot and grew vegetables. They took the vegetables back to school to make meals.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the need for farmers to play a role in outdoor learning. What worries me is the fact that so many schoolchildren do not understand where their food comes from. That is quite frightening, especially when, if we ask some schoolchildren where their potatoes or chips come from, they say, “McDonald’s”. Does my hon. Friend think that the National Farmers Union and farmers need to play a key role in such education, and in improving understanding of where food comes from?

[Mr Williams]

Absolutely. One of the benefits of the project that I was involved in was that we considered the seasonality of fruit and vegetables. I think that it is assumed that because children live in a rural area they have automatic access to farms and to schemes of the kind that the NFU and others, such as the Farmers Union of Wales, have put forward. That assumption should not be made. That is why the debate is important, for getting some clear guidelines. It is beginning to seem a little like a Welsh debate—I am proud of that, but I shall not stray on to devolved matters.

Every year at the school where I taught we took the year 5 and 6 children to stay at an outdoor pursuit centre in Montgomeryshire, where they could do kayaking, orienteering, rock climbing, mountain walks and canoeing—the very kinds of activities from which many children with special needs, who were not high achievers in the classroom, really gained. We were teaching concepts of teamwork, collaborative work and team building. Those were important opportunities for the children.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

The point that my hon. Friend makes about the outdoor pursuit centre is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made the point that health and safety is an issue when taking children out of the classroom, and such outdoor pursuit centres have health and safety covered; they have the skills to deal with pupils safely and give them the experiences that have been described.

[Mr Williams]

I agree very much. One of the nice things for a teacher organising such trips was that there was no need to get embroiled in the bureaucracy of organising a risk assessment; it had already been done by trained professionals.

This is a core debate, not a peripheral thing. It is not a trendy lefty debate about the effectiveness of group work or topic work—debates that have happened in the past. It is about enhancing learning in the classroom, teaching in context, teaching in the real world and broadening horizons in the strongest way. As I reflect on my education, I recall that the only such opportunity that I had in secondary school—there was little in primary school—was the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. That is a great scheme, with great opportunities for young people, but very much curtailed and limited.

Was there, in the three schools where I taught, always a dedicated member of staff with expertise, responsible for developing the outdoor curriculum? If there was, in some instances it was not very visible. Should we give more prominence to outdoor education in initial teacher training? I did a PGCE course, from which I benefited; I gained my qualification and enjoyed my 12 years in the classroom, but there were limitations with respect to outdoor education.

To repeat a question that has been put to the Minister, is the initial teacher training that we provide giving teachers the skills that they need to lead outdoor learning? It is all very well talking about identifying opportunities; teachers sit there developing their lesson plans and identifying opportunities. It is a matter of whether those opportunities for outdoor learning can be delivered. It is not about burdening the curriculum. I agree with the direction of travel: it is about scaling down the curriculum.

Years ago, I worked as a researcher in the other place. When the national curriculum was introduced in 1988, I remember the huge number of representations from different organisations in favour of including subjects in the national curriculum. That was an over-burdening experience.

I also remember, years later when I was in the classroom, the minutiae of detail directed from the centre about how I should deliver a numeracy hour and a literacy hour, down to the five minutes of a plenary session at the end. We are moving away from that over-prescriptive period. There is consensus among all who have spoken so far that we are seeking to build meaningful cross-curricular links in key areas of the curriculum—notably geography, history and science—for which outdoor activities are appropriate.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire mentioned, the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families produced its report in April 2010. I want to draw on three of its conclusions. First, the report talked of the ability of families to pay, or their inability to pay, for trips and the deterrent to schools in offering opportunities to pupils. At one school where I taught, there was a blanket policy. We could not countenance any outlandish trips, because we knew that the parents in the deprived wards of that area would be unable even to subsidise their children’s trips.

The Select Committee recognised the principle of subsidies for children from low-income families for school trips, and I think that that should be endorsed. The report also talked about an individual entitlement within the national curriculum to at least one school visit each term. That is integral to the curriculum that needs to be delivered. I would like to hear the Minister’s comments on that individual entitlement to outdoor education.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I draw attention to another thing. When I was a teacher, it was perfectly acceptable for one member of staff to take one class into town. What has happened since then?

[Mr Mark Williams]

My hon. Friend is right. The answer came from my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole when he talked about the one-to-10 rule. That is very hard, and it is also sometimes hard to engage parents to become involved in outdoor pursuits. We think of a captive audience of parents eager to accompany their children on trips, but that is not always the case.

There is a fundamental need for schools to have a policy on learning outside the classroom. As I said, it is not just a matter of having a policy, with words in readiness for the Ofsted or Estyn inspections; it is about being able to deliver. The Government do recognise the importance of outdoor learning—as, to their credit, did the last Government. It is important for the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom to get on with the job. I regret that the Select Committee’s recommendations on additional resources and Government regulation and monitoring guidance were not accepted.

We had a little spirited debate about Welsh Assembly Government policy. I do not want regulation and rules to be over-prescriptive, but we do need some clear guidelines from the centre. Most professionals in most of the schools I have been involved with fully recognise the importance of that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) mentioned. They are delivering the foundation stage with great effectiveness—I have two young children experiencing the foundation stage now. However, that is not always the case across England and elsewhere in the UK. We need those rules and that guidance.

I will not repeat all the figures about the effectiveness of outdoor education mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire. I do, however, want to say something about the risk-averse culture developing in our country, and the characterisation of many children’s lives as “home to school and back home again”—from the classroom to the sitting room, or wherever the TVs are in the house.

I do not agree with everything that the much-maligned Lord Young says—far from it. However, his work “Common Sense, Common Safety” was important. It was a welcome attempt to rebalance the risk-averse culture in the country that has considerably damaged the tradition of school trips, with teachers and schools inevitably concerned about liability if things go wrong.

I remember the frustration and bureaucracy of trying to organise trips. It is not surprising that 76% of teachers identify health and safety risk assessments as the main barrier to delivering outdoor learning. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Despite the few but tragic cases where things have gone wrong, there has to be a measure of sensible risk assessment. Action should be taken where negligent behaviour occurs, but we must do all we can to rebalance the system.

In his foreword to Lord Young’s report, the Prime Minister states that we need to

“focus regulations where they are most needed; with a new system that is proportionate, not bureaucratic; that treats adults like adults and reinstates some common…trust”.

Some of us may disagree about what that constitutes, but I hope we can all agree with the sentiment.

The Department for Education launched its “Learning Outside the Classroom” manifesto in 2006. That report highlighted research on the way the brain works. Reading it took me back to teacher training and some of the lectures and seminars I participated in. The research showed that learners can be re-engaged with the world as they experience it, known as “authentic learning”.

That is particularly important when we look at the sciences. The Field Studies Council has seen a decline in the number of people studying secondary science visiting their residential centres across the country, with a drop of 18% between 2008 and 2010. We need to engage with the people who have the potential interest, if it can be captured and promoted in a positive way. It was a sad reflection that only 47% of six to 15-year-olds went on a visit to the countryside with their school in 2008. I am not going to talk about the foundation stage in Wales, other than to say that it has been a huge success.

There is much in the Government’s agenda that suggests that they are keen to encourage more activity. They are keen on volunteering and we have had Lord Young’s review. I hope the Minister will be able to outline what steps are being taken to ensure that more outdoor learning can take place at schools and translate support into concrete achievement.

One final point: I want to commend the young artisans scheme in Ceredigion, in the Penparcau ward of Aberystwyth. It is a deprived area—we have deprived wards in rural Wales as others do across the country. That scheme has largely worked with low achievers and people with special needs, taking the craft, design and technology curriculum out of the classroom. It takes youngsters from years 5 and 6 to work with employers and local colleges, out of the conventional classroom, so that the young people can see links with the real world. It is a pioneering scheme that has been going for years. Later, as 16-year-olds, some participants have found decent gainful employment on the back of an outdoors education policy.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—