Learning Outside the Classroom

On 28th November 2006, the Learning Outside the Classroom Manifesto was launched which sets out a vision to enable every young person to experience the world beyond the classroom as an essential part of their learning and personal development.

The Manifesto brings together a coalition of organisations to support schools and others in providing these valuable opportunities.

To find out more about the Learning Outside the Classroom visit www.lotc.org.uk

Quality Badge

To help schools provide more learning outside the classroom experiences for young people, a Quality Badge for providers has been launched as part of the ‘Out & About’ package. This enables schools to identify easily organisations and settings providing quality learning experiences. These include, for example, venues such as field study and adventurous activity centres, museums, historic houses, places of worship, theatres, galleries, zoos, botanic gardens and farms, as well as organisations providing expeditions and cultural, language and study visits abroad.

The Badge aims to become the kite mark for good practice; recognising those providers offering high-quality teaching and learning experiences and managing risk effectively. In order to gain a Badge, providers will have to meet a range of generic indicators of quality. This scheme should ultimately improve the quality of learning outside the classroom and help more schools provide exciting and challenging experiences for all young people.

It is hoped that the Quality Badge will overcome some of the barriers preventing schools from providing out of classroom experiences for their pupils, as it should simplify the school’s task of planning and running activities when they choose to use an external provider. The Badge should therefore provide huge benefits for schools. Using badged providers helps schools, teachers and other leaders to plan more effectively learning outside the classroom visits that meet their needs and those of their pupils, while also helping them to cut down on the paperwork involved in risk management planning.

For more information about the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge, please visit www.lotcqualitybadge.org.uk