TV presenters give their support to school visits

TV presenters and adventurers, Paul Rose and Kate Humble, have given their support to school visits, as a generation of young people risk missing out on these experiences.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, there has been a dramatic decrease in school groups undertaking educational visits. This is impacting on the educational opportunities available to children and is threatening the survival of those organisations providing these experiences.
 
Paul Rose, television presenter, expedition leader for National Geographic’s Pristine Seas Expeditions and former vice president of the Royal Geographic Society, said his life was turned around by a school trip when he was a teenager: “I failed my Eleven Plus and hated school. I just couldn’t see the point of anything. Then in Secondary school my Geography teacher took my class to the Brecon Beacons. All the horrors of education and learning disappeared. It was truly inspirational. At last things made sense – if I wanted to use a map and compass then I needed Maths. If I wanted to understand the map and the ground, then I needed Geography. That trip was the making of me, it was what I desperately needed. That was my door opening, it was me becoming Paul Rose. We cannot let these opportunities disappear.”   
 
Kate Humble, television presenter, wildlife specialist and author, said: “Lessons in a classroom can only achieve so much.  School trips I took to see the geological features we were learning about in geography, or to the Natural History Museum, or simply to our local park to collect leaves & pinecones, brought those lessons alive.  They made sense of things, gave us all a greater understanding & appreciation of what we were learning, and made our newfound knowledge something exciting.  They were an invaluable part of my education.”
 
Dr Anne Hunt, Chief Executive for the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (CLOtC), said: “Covid related school closures and restrictions are resulting in organisations who provide high quality educational visits closing their venues and losing whole teams of staff and volunteers. With no overnight visits since March and for the foreseeable future, the providers of residential learning experiences are facing particularly challenging circumstances. There is a very real possibility that many organisations providing these very valuable learning opportunities simply won’t survive the current crisis, meaning a whole generation of pupils could go through school without experiencing a visit to a museum, a field studies trip or a foreign language tour.”
 
The impact of the pandemic on providers is becoming very stark and it is hitting organisations big and small – the National Trust is currently consulting on a proposal that would make all its learning staff redundant, PGL has lost a quarter of its workforce, STA Travel ceased trading in August, and Cheddar Caves has closed ‘for the foreseeable future’.

To support the educational visits sector and protect these vital opportunities for children and young people, the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom, the Outdoor Education Advisers Panel, School Travel Forum and the Expedition Providers Association are working with Government to advocate for:

Recognising the positive benefits that learning outside the classroom and educational visits can deliver and their role in helping address widening inequalities
Reiterating the recommendation that schools can take their learning off-site and on day visits, and work with other learning providers to bring their services into schools, as long as these follow school Covid secure guidelines
Working with insurance companies to ensure future educational visits are covered for cancellations arising due to Covid so schools can start planning for the future.