Memorandum submitted by the Museums Association
OVERVIEW
Museums offer some of the most significant opportunities
available to schools to extend students' learning outside the
classroom. They can bring the curriculum to life. Roman history
suddenly seems much more real when you can handle the pots and
coins a citizen of the Roman Empire might have used. Every child
learning about dinosaurs should have the opportunity to come face
to face with the fossilised remains of one. A student may think
that they are no good at art until they have the chance to work
with a practising artist in a museum. As well as their obvious
contributions to art, history and science, museums make contributions
across the whole range of the curriculum[7]
Like other out-of-classroom learning opportunities
museums can engage students who are turned off by formal learning,
with the chance to learn by imagining or doing. They give students
the opportunity to experience a completely different environment,
swapping a classroom for the kitchens of a Tudor house or a coalmine,
300 feet underground.
Recent investment has strengthened the quality
and range of educational provision in museums. However, there
are still barriers which prevent many schools making as much use
of museums as they might. The cost of transport means that many
schools in more remote or rural areas miss out on the full richness
of the experience that museums have to offer. And additional resources
have largely been concentrated in a small number of museums, meaning
that the education potential of others is seriously under-developed.
This response contains some proposals for targeted investment,
which would greatly increase the opportunities available in museums
for education outside the classroom.
1. Background
1.1 The Museums Association (MA) is an independent
membership organisation representing museums and galleries in
the UK and people who work for them. The Association has over
5,000 individual members and 600 institutional members. These
institutional members encompass around 1,500 museums in the UK
ranging from the largest government-funded national museums to
small volunteer-run charitable trust museums. The MA is a charity,
receiving no government funding, which seeks to inform, represent
and develop museums and people who work for them in order that
they may provide a better service to society and the public.
1.2 This inquiry is concerned both with
out-of-classroom learning in general, and with outdoor education
in particular. Many museums offer opportunities for outdoor learning.
Some farming museums, historic house museums, industrial museums
and social history museums preserve whole landscapes and townscapes,
and give children the opportunity to enjoy the particular challenges
of learning in the open air. However, in this response, the MA
has looked at out of classroom learning in a broader sense, in
order to encompass the whole range of experiences, which museums
have to offer.
1.3 Museums increasingly offer a range of
outreach activities to schools and do not only interact with schools
on the museum site. They support a range of out of classroom learning
activities. Natural history specialists might organise fieldwork,
which drew on the museum's collections. Museum archaeologists
can assist with the interpretation of archaeological sites, and
social historians can help children to see their own environment
in a new light.
2. Introduction
2.1 In 2003, the MA launched a proposal
that the Government should fund a free museum visit for every
school child every year. We can supply the Committee with copies
of the leaflet which outlines the proposal. In brief, the scheme
looks at ways in which the most significant barriers to greater
use of museums by schools can be overcome.
2.2 Estimates suggest that around 50% of
school children already visit a museum on a school visit every
year. This is encouraging, but there are clearly missed opportunities.
Participation is much higher among primary schools than secondary
schools, suggesting that museums' potential to provide more sophisticated
and challenging learning experiences for older students is under-exploited.
Transport costs are a significant barrier, meaning that children's
experience of museum visiting is often circumscribed by their
immediate geographical area. Many schools find it difficult to
cover teachers' absences so that they can prepare for, as well
as lead, school visits. And while teachers and students value
sessions which are led by specialist museum educators, many museums
are unable to provide such direct teaching for school groups.
2.3 The MA proposes a scheme whereby the
Government would provide funding to schools to use for visits
to museums. Such a scheme could of course be extended to include
other out-of-school learning opportunities, such as the historic
environment and the countryside. Our research suggests that an
average of £10 per child each year would enable every child
to enjoy a high quality taught session at a museum, or other site.
The largest element of this would cover the school's costs, paying
for the cost of transport and supply cover for teachers preparing
and leading the visit; the remainder would pay for the delivery
of a high-quality session taught by a specialist educator at the
museum. A comprehensive web-based directory (which could build
on existing online resources) would make it easy for teachers
to find out what sessions were available at museums.
2.4 This is an average cost. Some urban
schools, which could take advantage of free local transport would
require much less funding, while rural schools and those in remote
areas might require more. While a universal roll out of the scheme
would be expensive (estimated at £64 million per annum for
England, based on 6.4 million 4-16 year-olds in schools), it could
feasibly be targeted in the first instance at those areas where
take-up of out of school learning is poor, either because of a
lack of regional facilities, or because of poverty and social
exclusion.
2.5 It is important to acknowledge that
improving museums' service to schools has been a major focus of
the Government's investment in regional museums through the Renaissance
in the Regions programme. Since this funding is still at an early
stage, it is too soon to assess its impact. However, although
welcome, the funding is limited to a relatively small number of
regional museums. There are many more museums with the potential
to provide an excellent service to schools, but which do not meet
the other criteria for funding through Renaissance in the Regions.
2.6 Since 1999, the Department for Education
and Stills has provided funding for education work in museums
and galleries, through the Museums and Galleries Education Programme,
phases 1 and 2. This investment has funded innovative projects,
with a high rate of satisfaction from both teachers and students.
However, a limitation of this funding was that it was project-based.
Museums 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.
2.7 One compelling argument for increasing
schools' use of museums and other out of class room learning venues
is that people who visit regularly as children are much more likely
to return as adults. Broader school use helps to ensure that as
many people as possible benefit from national cultural and natural
resources throughout their lives. Museums are also increasingly
developing after-school activities; school visits can help to
encourage children to take up these after-school opportunities.
3. Barriers to the development of out of
classroom learning
3.1 The inquiry's terms of reference specify
a number of possible barriers to the expansion and development
of out of classroom learning. This section of our response reflects
on some of these in the context of museums.
3.2 Costs and funding. Cost is often
perceived to be a non-issue as far as museum visits are concerned:
since 2001, additional government funding has enabled all national
museums to offer free entry; most local authority museums are
also free. However, independent museums, which rely mainly on
self-generated income, still have to charge for admission. Independent
museums make up over a third of all Registered museums, and often
offer the only museum provision in more remote or rural areas.
3.4 Furthermore, many museums make a special
charge for a taught session for school groups; those that do not
have to subsidise the service out of other income, and are always
oversubscribed. A funding stream which allowed schools to pay
for high-quality taught sessions at museums would enable museums
to expand their capacity as well as ensuring that schools continued
to visit independent museums: many independent museums report
that their school visits are falling as schools chose instead
to visit free museums in their area. If this trend were to continue
it would mean that students missed out on the chance to visit
some of the important surviving examples of our industrial and
cultural heritage.
3.5 As with other forms of out of classroom
learning, the cost of transport to museums can be prohibitive,
especially for schools not able to make use of public transport.
Funding which covered transport costs would allow greater equality
of access, so that children growing up in rural areas can have
the same opportunities to enjoy their heritage as those in urban
centres.
3.6 External assessment of provision.
The current Registration scheme for museums is run by the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). It is about to be relaunched
as Accreditation; and it provides quality control over museums
and the services they offer. MLA has also developed a highly regarded
framework, Inspiring Learning for All, which helps museums to
improve their approach to learning provision. Nevertheless, museums
remain outside a mainstream educational assessment programme.
We believe that museums would welcome tougher assessment of their
educational provision, if such a scheme was backed up with additional
support and helped to bring them closer to the educational mainstream.
3.7 Integration with existing school
structures and the motivation of teachers. We believe that
there is great potential for museums to work more closely with
schools and in particular to explore ways of providing training
and development opportunities both for schools and museum educators.
One possible model might be a programme of secondments whereby
teachers could spend some time working in a museum, and museum
educators (who are mostly qualified teachers) could spend some
time working in schools. The Museums Association has experience
of running a successful secondment scheme, the Sharing Museum
Skills Millennium Awards and we believe that a relatively small
amount of funding could unlock substantial benefits through such
a secondment scheme.
3.8 We believe that there is scope for increasing
the emphasis on out of classroom learning in initial teaching
training. This would help to build teachers' confidence in leading
visits to museums and other venues, and increase their understanding
of the potential of out of classroom learning opportunities.
3.9 Museums could also help with mid-career
training for teachers, including helping them revitalise their
approach to their subject specialisms. The chance to work alongside
experts in their specialist fields, and to work with internationally
significant collections could be very motivating for teachers.
3.10 How provision in the UK compares
with other countries. We understand that the Ministry of Culture
in the Netherlands has operated a culture voucher scheme for school
children to enable them to access cultural opportunities such
as theatre and museum visits. The scheme provided a voucher, which
could be redeemed at a range of venues, either by groups or individual
children.
October 2004
7 Research into the projects funded by the Department
for Education and Skills, Museums and Galleries Education Programme
2, found that 45% of sessions addressed literacy, 41% citizenship,
32% ICT and 20% numeracy, as well as the more expected history,
art, geography and science. (DfES, 2004) Back
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