There is no doubt that pupils and students from all social backgrounds and from across the entire intellectual, behavioural, and emotional range benefit from learning outside the classroom.

But there really is no reason why any one group should have more access to learning outside the classroom than others. Of course, different types of learning outside the classroom will be evolved for different types of pupil and student, but there is every reason why everyone should be involved.

Perhaps the most important point to note here is that the recent development of minibuses which can be leased rather than purchased means that more small groups can be taken to and from locations. This means that pupils and students who find unexplored and unexpected locations more difficult to cope with can be introduced to such locations in small groups on events designed to meet their particular difficulties.

There are a number of articles which have appeared lately which report the scientific discovery that learning that is undertaken in an unusual place is much more likely to be remembered than learning which takes place in a familiar place. If you have not seen our basic review of this research there is an article that covers the topic here.

This effect, through which the location of the learning (whether it is private study or a lesson being taught, or indeed an outdoor activity) affects the speed of learning and the ability to remember the learning, has only recently been verified scientifically. And because of this the exploration of the effect is still in its infancy - although there is no doubt that the effect is real.

However most of us notice this effect particularly through our ability to remember individual, unique, events which happen in places we visit rarely. For example, many people report being able to remember holidays in places visited only once - with the memory being readily available to recall years, often decades, after the holiday.

This reveals a fundamental aspect of memory. When the situation around us is unusual, our brains become far more active and our memories retain and make available to us much more of the information around that event.

It is this power of enhanced memory of events that take place in unusual circumstances that can be utilised when studying. A student attempting to revise for a GCSE, for example, is likely to remember far more if the revision takes place in a highly unusual location than if it takes place in the classroom, the student’s bedroom, or any other place with which the student is completely familiar.

Similarly taking a group of students to an unusual place in order to revise a topic that many students have a difficulty with, can give, in one session, a much greater understanding of the topic than can be achieved in half a dozen such revision sessions held in the regular classroom.

This in turn has led a number of schools to arrange minibus trips out to unusual places for the simple purpose of showing the students that revising (or indeed teaching) in an unusual environment can be of enormous benefit.

The students are then encouraged subsequently to experiment with this technique themselves by taking themselves off to unusual places to revise.

Of course, taking the students out to one or two unusual locations does require the availability of a minibus and this has been enhanced of late by the possibility of leasing a minibus. If you are interested in this approach, more details are available here.

We’ve all come across parents who express concern when their child is not in school studying for an exam, but is instead on what they might see as “a day off”.

It is therefore very important that parents are fully educated in the benefits of learning outside the classroom. With this is mind you might wish to produce a sample “Why Outside?” page which can be copied and either put on the school’s website or sent to parents to explain the school’s policy.

It is also vital to record all Learning Outside the Classroom and present it as a memory to students, as an example to colleagues who might be a little less enthusiastic to engage with the process, to help parents understand, and to show the inspectorate.

Various surveys of the parents of school pupils and students have sought to find out what parents really want for their children in relation to the school education they undergo.

But what is interesting is that the “wants” are often quite different from the factors that parents remember of their children’s education when questioned about the past year.

For example, one of the factors that researchers find parents particularly remember are the days that pupils and students spend outside the classroom.

Of course, one reason for this is that in many schools such days are rarities when compared with days spent in the classroom.   

Another is that such events are remembered by the pupils and students and so they often talk about them to each other and to their parents.

Indeed pupils and students talk about days outside the classroom far more than days spent inside the classroom.

We have dealt with the reason for this in our article Uncertainty is good which you can find on this website - and as you can read there, when a situation in which learning takes place is out of the ordinary, learning levels are always heightened, and so the information and knowledge gained in that experience more readily stays in the brain.

Because of this the pupils and students talk about such events a lot more than they might otherwise do.

But it is often the case that parents themselves don’t fully understand why schools are taking the students and pupils on trips, and for this reason it is helpful to explain to parents the thinking behind each event.

Whether you go into the details covered in the “Uncertainty is Good” article or whether you just say that the pupils and students learn more when learning outside the classroom is, of course, always a matter of choice, but the fact is that if the parents are given more background into why learning outside the classroom is happening, they will undoubtedly be more willing to support such ventures financially.

This, of course, can be most helpful if you are considering leasing a minibus as it is possible to gain extra voluntary funding for such a venture when the reasons behind it are set out rather than just assumed.