Outdoor Education
Outdoor Education
The School’s commitment to providing a supportive environment for experiential learning extends far beyond the classroom. Opportunities for outdoor education are integral to the Curriculum and the experiences which students have at the School.
The principles underlying the School’s Outdoor Education Programme emphasise:
- The development of community
- The significance of leadership and teamwork
- The discovery of both confidence and compassion
- The value of respect for self and others
- The need for stewardship of the environment
- The relevance of the natural world to learning in the classroom and beyond.
Outdoor Education provides opportunities for learning through experience and direct investigation of the many features and phenomena to be found out-of-doors. These present young people with practical problems such as finding a route, crossing a stream, keeping warm and dry and having due regard to safety. It helps students build up their social skills and self esteem. Often, students who struggle in the classroom do very well in the outdoors. This can give them a real boost and enable them to understand that they can achieve in other areas.
Activities undertaken include:
- Camping
- Canoeing
- Fishing
- Walking
- Cycling
- Caving
- Orienteering
- Gorge walking
- Scrambling
- Cooking in the Outdoors
In the department we carry out risk assessments before activities are undertaken and all students and staff are aware of possible dangers and the part they have in making sure that all risks are reduced to a minimum, or avoided altogether.
