Outside the school comfort zone

School trips can give pupils the opportunity to learn and to mature outside the classroom, as well as create happy memories. Ian Beard, a head teacher and director at charity the School Journey Association talks about the importance of planning and the help the Association can provide

Having just returned from what is probably my 20th residential visit with primary-aged children in as many years including eight years as a head teacher, I am in no doubt of the important place that experiences which take young people beyond their classroom, local area and what is familiar to them should have in the school curriculum. I am sure that most colleagues reading this will agree that the class trip, journey, excursion or residential is more important now than it has ever been in broadening and deepening children’s school and life experiences. They have a key role to play in engaging our young people in their learning and in school life, and in creating the high-quality and memorable learning experiences all schools are striving to create in their broad and balanced curriculum.

The hook for learning
As teachers or educators, we are encouraged, now more than ever, to find the ‘hook’ for learning; the golden nugget during every lesson or learning journey that will engage every learner and ensure that we have their full commitment to what we are teaching. This gem of the learning process must be relevant, inspiring, jaw-dropping, felt kinaesthetically by each learner, as we are told that we remember much more if we ‘feel’ learning or move about, and allow us to create those magical moments that will deepen learning and create long-lasting memories of school life. This, of course, is no easy task, even for the most outstanding leaders and teachers in our schools. However, for many years the school trip has done just that.
    
The half-day visit to the museum, the full-day visit to London or the five day residential visit to France, have all played their part in providing an opportunity for students to have a real rather than imagined or simulated learning experience, one that takes students beyond the norm and pushes some out of their comfort zones and into a deeper understanding of their sense of place in the world. Such visits are almost always social, in that learning is collaborative and allow for planned and unplanned – often the most personal – moments of wisdom which we cannot replicate in the classroom, despite our access to YouTube and other multimedia offerings available to us at the touch of a button. School trips can provide the stimulus for weeks of work for which the pupils have a real and personal reference point for their learning journey and upon which to reflect about themselves and their achievements.
    
School trips are about creating opportunities for children to experience awe and wonder; that reaction to something beautiful or meaningful which they see, hear, feel or understand for the first time. I have yet to take children on a residential visit to the Isle of Man, for example, without them being awed by the ferry as it pulls into dock to take us over the Irish Sea or slightly overwhelmed by their first view of the Laxey wheel which they know they are about to ascend.
    
These and other trips have been full of wonderful moments, including when one realises that the child playing on the beach with other children is doing so, at the age of ten years, for first time in his life or when the child who is scared of heights starts (with some gentle encouragement of course) her descent on the zip wire screaming and finishes it laughing and smiling and wanting to do it again. These learning experiences are absolutely priceless and difficult to create on a wet Tuesday afternoon in the classroom.

A turning point
What is gained from an educational visit, particularly a residential visit, is not always measurable, nor is it the same for every student. In addition to the stimulus provided for ongoing learning which can, in turn, improve motivation, attendance and attainment, school trips can do much to support the ‘hidden curriculum’, that part of school life that aims to develop learning power and improve confidence, resilience, relationships, behaviour, tolerance and team-building or just an opportunity to be away from home. School visits provide opportunities that can enrich lives, particularly for those whose opportunities have and perhaps always will be limited by their home lives, and develop life skills that can then have an impact on self-development, attitudes to learning, self-esteem and long-term educational achievement.
    
For some children, a residential visit can be a ‘turning point’ in their school career and have a lasting impact on their self-esteem, motivation and the meaning they attach to school and their own lives. For many children, such events create long-lasting memories of a positive school experience. I have seen this impact many times in those children whose parents say that their children are more responsible following a residential visit, in those children whose behaviour and relationships with other children change for the better, and in the faces of those Year 6 children who share in their leavers’ assembly that days out and residentials were the among the best memories of their whole primary school life.

Planning for all eventualities
The new Ofsted framework (September 2014) makes little reference to trips and residential visits, although they often get a nice mention in school reports, but threaded through the framework, particularly in the section on Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) development is the need for schools to provide pupils with quality experiences and opportunities which enable them to develop a “sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them.” There is nothing like a school trip to do just that. It can be a spiritual – but not necessarily religious – experience and contribute to a child’s understanding of different social and cultural contexts, depending on the nature of the visit.
    
The success of a school trip or residential visit, of course, lies in its planning and its management and in the support that the visit receives from staff, children, parents and others to make it all that it could be. Visits are not without their challenges, nor without the need the need for careful planning, stakeholder commitment, including parents, supervision by staff, funding from school and parents, risk assessment and evaluation. It is these, and the responsibility for children away from home, that sadly and sometimes unnecessarily deters some schools, and their head teachers, from offering their young people a residential experience at all.
    
However, help is at hand for both the experienced educational visit leader (or Headteacher) and those thinking about embarking on a residential project for the first time. There are many organisations offering residential experiences for school children, not least the many companies offering highly-programmed physical and adventurous activities at activity centres all round the UK and abroad.

However, for those looking to offer something a little different (instead or in addition to the above), an experience which could be more inspiring and more bespoke to the needs of the school, the curriculum and the children, schools can turn to the School Journey Association (SJA) for support, advice, planning.
 
Helping schools
The SJA offers a wide range of UK and European tours for both primary and secondary schools, some of which have been tried-and-tested over many years whilst others are created at the request from schools who want to try something a little different or have a specific purpose or place in mind. SJA’s team of tour managers, with the support of trustees (all of whom are either retired or serving head teachers with years of experience in leading educational visits) are equipped to take responsibility for some of the hard work, including arranging all transport and accommodation, undertaking vetting and risk assessment of transport suppliers and hotels, and the booking of venues and activities. This leaves school staff to focus on the important educational outcomes of the trip. SJA also offers comprehensive insurance and the protection of an ABTA and ATOL bond should a school party need to return home for any reason.
    
The SJA also offers subsidies to children who come from disadvantaged families (usually an proven entitlement to Free School Meals) which, together with Pupil Premium (see below) and other funding from the school, may go a long way to supporting families in meeting the cost of a residential visits which otherwise may be out of reach for some. As a long-established charity, this is a key part of SJA’s raison d’etre. Applications from schools are considered at the monthly meetings of the trustees.
    
I remain convinced that every primary and secondary school should offer their young people a wide and varied curriculum which, although missing (as it always has been) from the print of the National Curriculum, should include opportunities to experience life outside the classroom through school trips and residentials. I encourage school leaders to think about the richness and breadth of the opportunities they currently offer their young people and to seize the opportunity the new curriculum offers all schools to create new and exciting opportunities alongside the hard work that is needed in raising expectations and standards in our schools. School leaders should not be deterred by the challenges or responsibilities of school visits, including residential visits, particularly knowing that help and support is available from organisations such as The School Journey Association.

Increases in pupil premium (£1,300 per pupil in 2014) now give schools more responsibilities and freedoms to use this funding to raise attainment and level the playing field for disadvantaged children. A school contribution from this budget to a residential visit may be money well spent if it impacts on the self-esteem, behaviour, team-work, resilience, engagement and attendance of some pupils or on the child who has little chance of doing anything exciting with his family any time soon. School trips and residentials are powerful tools in the school curriculum and, in my experience, go a long way to ensuring that those magical moments in school life are not as rare as they might be.

Further information
www.sjatours.org