Educational visits

Plymouth is a rich cultural city within easy access of a wide variety of different environments. Consequently children and young people take part in a great many trips out of their classrooms to see and experience the real world for themselves.

For many the purpose is to support and connect the relevance of work in school but there are many more acknowledged benefits. Recent research has shown that other benefits include young people learning about themselves and about working well with others. In some cases this appreciation of strengths and opportunities has become the primary purpose for getting out, whether this is achieved through cultural exchanges, commercial experiences or surviving in wild country or challenging environments.

City youth workers use similar opportunities to build the essential relationships they need with young people, and to build trust and motivation to influence young people and their communities.

Educational visits help young people to understand themselves, make decisions that play to their strengths and therefore seek out options that will best suit their successful development.

It is now increasingly possible to have the value and learning of educational visits accredited through both schools and the Youth Service.

The Council actively supports this activity by providing an assurance that educational trips are encouraged for all its students and monitored to ensure quality and safety. There are several different approaches to how this is achieved for example:

• ensuring that everyone who needs it has the relevant information.
• providing staff who conduct visits (party leaders) and those who have to approve them, Educational Visits Coordinators (EVCs) with guidance to help ensure that they are confident to make the essential judgements and decisions that their roles require.
• ensuring additional guidance, often generated from incident investigations and from innovation, is circulated to EVCs for passing onto their colleagues.
• thorough training made available to staff to become EVCs, party leaders, adventure activity leaders, first aiders and in the form of tailored programmes to address any local need.
• providing feedback from monitoring visits to school governors, head teachers, managers, party leaders and to anyone else who has a genuine interest. Monitoring is through confirming party leaders plans prior to implementation, observing and testing arrangements for approving, seeing activities taking place in the field delivered by the Council's staff or by a contracted provider.
• maintaining a support and guidance facility via phone or email.
• twice yearly news sheets.

The Council's responsibilities are delivered by the Outdoor Education Adviser (OEA) whose role is supported by the Outdoor Education Advisers Panel, that works closely with the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). For further information on  the work please contact the Outdoor Education Adviser. If you have a query about a specific trip please contact the organiser in the first instance.

A great deal of information can be found out about providers and the conditions they meet through their own websites or those of the professional association to which they subscribe. Providers who are legally required to be inspected and hold a licence can be verified on the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority website.

For further information about educational visits please see our educational visits frequently asked questions page.

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