Learning Outside the Classroom has been a compulsory part of the curriculum in Scotland for several years. But the fact that it is not compulsory in the rest of the UK has not stopped teachers throughout Britain from making it a significant part of their teaching regime. 

Indeed, as research conducted by Learning Outside the Classroom Week revealed in 2016, Learning Outside was by then thoroughly mainstream.   

And, as many would agree, so it should be, as numerous reports have suggested that Learning Outside the Classroom can have a huge benefit for pupils and students of all ages, and many adults will concur, being able to remember events that took place outside their school much more readily than those that occurred in the classroom.

So it was not surprising that 96% of primary school teachers and 94% of secondary school teachers who responded to the survey had been engaged in at least one Learning Outside project during the past year.

What’s more, the research clearly revealed that teachers are becoming increasingly imaginative in their use of the environment beyond the school when it comes to different ways of teaching and learning outside the classroom.

Transport has always been a main issue for schools wishing to engage in Learning Outside, and, as might be expected, for secondary schools the most common type of Learning Outside experience involved a journey in the school minibus (31%), followed by exploration of an environment within the school grounds but outside the school buildings (25%).

Although minibus use is less common with primary schools this is where there is a huge growth, especially with the advent of the leasing of a minibus and sharing a minibus between two or more schools - with each paying a portion of the leasing costs. There are more details of this in the “How to get there” section of the website.

When teachers were asked where they had been on their last learning outside the classroom experience, a location in the school grounds but outside the normal teaching rooms was the most frequently mentioned by both primary and secondary teachers.  

Also widely reported by teachers were sites related to a specific issue being studied, such as a historic, scientific, geographic, or other similar locations. Interestingly trips to sites of cultural or sporting interest were far less common.

Primary teachers, however, reported that their most recent endpoint for Learning Outside was a location in the school grounds (27%) or a location to stimulate creative activity (23%). However, here again we have seen a change as increasingly we are seeing smaller groups being taken out in a minibus or in two minibuses, where a group of schools band together for this purpose. Indeed it seems that we now find a secondary school sharing one of its leased minibuses occasionally with its feeder schools.

Interesting, only 8% of secondary school teachers cited “creative activity” as a reason for taking pupils or students outside the classroom, which seems to suggest that art, painting, drawing, dramatic improvisation, and indeed the gathering of inspiration for artistic activity, is largely restricted to events within the normal teaching rooms. However there are indications that this number is growing.

Our final question invited teachers to tell us about anything that made Learning Outside more difficult than it might be.

Both primary and secondary school teachers stated that transport was the main issue (50% secondary, 34% primary).