Centres and operators
61. Historically, LEAs have been major providers
of facilities for school trips through their networks of activity
centres. In recent years, many of these centres have closed and
the balance of provision has shifted towards private and voluntary
operators.[65] This is
not a universal trend: the Committee has heard of some local authorities
that have expanded their provision. This has often been achieved
through a process of financial and organisational restructuring,
as in the example of Hampshire county council:
"During the 1980s and 1990s Hampshire bucked
the trend of LEAs that sold off or privatised their outdoor centres
in the face of budget pressures and protected its centres from
changes to educational funding arrangements by moving its centres
into a department outside of education. Thus protected from pressures
created by the increasing devolution of funding directly to schools,
the county was able to grow and develop its outdoor learning opportunities.
Additionally, a dedicated staff of experienced professional instructors
and teachers have developed at each centre, able to fully support
teachers working in the outdoors. A centrally based Outdoor Activities
Officer is also employed to ensure consistency of service, operation
and risk management across the centres."[66]
62. In the course of this inquiry, private operators
have contacted us, advocating an expansion in private provision.
They have stated that private operators remove the burden of risk
and of bureaucracy from schools. For example, in their evidence,
World Challenge Expeditions Ltd challenge the traditional relationship
between schools and LEAs, stating that school trips are "widely
inaccessible due to restrictive practice and public sector bureaucracy
rather than issues of funding":
"DfES guidance on school trips can allow a
teacher or Head to believe that they are personally liable for
any incident, and fails to recognize that much provision, and
much of the liability, can be outsourced—as
with school transport […] Further difficulties arise over
the allocation of funding, where the tendering process for numerous
central government initiatives obscures any reasonable chance
of a level playing field. Funds are distributed by Connexions
partnerships heavily weighted towards local relationships, with
no obligation to assess the quality of provision, innovation or
particularly the ability of the provider to recruit children.
As a result vast sums of money go unspent, except on a limited
range of local opportunity - and at much higher cost to the taxpayer
because the public sector adds in administration fees, whereas
the private sector bid with a fixed inclusive price. The result,
apart from being chaotic, also heavily penalizes innovation or
private-sector involvement."[67]
63. In oral evidence, Andy Simpson of the RSPB described
the way in which voluntary providers had been affected by the
decline of central LEA provision:
"Whilst we want to do more we are very cognisant
of the fact that the money has to be raised from somewhere. If
one was being critical of Government over the years, one would
say that since local management of schools and the demise of many
of the local authority field study centres which offered subsidised
visits to children—which
is how I started—Government
has had pretty much of a free ride. It is the NGO sector and other
providers that have stepped in to fill that vacuum. We want to
do more. We would appreciate some help."[68]
64. The provision of activity centres and other facilities
is closely linked to the way in which outdoor education, and education
more generally, is funded. Some LEAs have cut central services,
including school activity centres, in order to comply with Government
pressure to delegate more and more funding directly to schools.
The recent Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners published
by the DfES suggests that this pressure will continue and even
increase as control over budgets shifts to schools rather than
LEAs. In this document, the Government proposes that local authorities
will take on a more 'strategic' planning and collaboration role
rather than providing services centrally.[69]
In its Five Year Strategy, the Government proposes that
all secondary schools should become independent specialist schools
and that LEAs should lose control over school budgets. We recommend
that the DfES give serious consideration to how it will structure
funding for central outdoor activity services under this new system,
or help schools access private and voluntary provision, so that
students still have access to high quality outdoor education.
65. The DfES has funded some initiatives intended
to assist schools in organising trips, which we discuss later
in this report. These include the Growing Schools project, which
is designed to support teachers using the 'outdoor classroom'
as a curriculum resource, GetREAL, which offers residential visits
to teenagers over the summer holidays modelled on the US camp
experience, and project funding for museums, galleries and activity
centres to facilitate school visits. Here too, funding issues
have been highlighted as a barrier to expansion. Witnesses have
complained that these initiatives are generally only supported
by short term project-based funding. Activity centres participating
in these initiatives found it difficult to plan for the future
and:
"were only able to employ additional staff
on a temporary or casual basis, which meant that skills and expertise
were lost when the projects ended. They were not able to develop
such strong relationships with schools as a longer-term programme
of investment would offer".[70]
It is essential that the DfES and Department for
Culture, Media and Sport develop a strategy for the long-term
viability of activity centres, helping them to retain staff, build
strong links with schools and develop expertise.
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