As a mode of teaching and learning LOtC is probably the most powerful system that we have.

Our aim in setting up Learning Outside the Classroom Week is very simple – we want to encourage educators in schools across the UK who don’t engage in LOtC to do it. And we want those who do it occasionally to do it more.

Why? Because learning outside the classroom works. Indeed, as a mode of teaching and learning LOtC is probably the most powerful system that we have.

In believing this, the team behind Learning Outside the Classroom Week has been searching for the answers to two simple questions:

  1. What is it that encourages educators to become involved in LOtC?
  2. What is it that stops some educators in schools from becoming involved in LOtC?

The answer to the first question is obvious (or so we think).

Indeed, pupils and students can gain enormous benefits from LOtC that they either would not gain from learning inside the classroom or at the very least would not gain so quickly.

Such as, that learning outside the classroom is more readily remembered than learning inside the classroom. And that learning outside the classroom can also help pupils and students to develop socially and mentally.

There are also huge benefits for schools – benefits which parents are very quick to pick up on and which thus make the school more popular and parents more willing to get involved.

In asking the second question we quickly realised that there are several basic issues here, but that one barrier to LOtC is more prevalent than any other?

After analysing the results of a survey issued to educators in UK schools, both primary and secondary school teachers stated that transport was the main issue (50% secondary, 34% primary). Or, more specifically, the cost of transport.

So how can this be overcome?

In getting your school involved with LOtC Week which is running from the 27 June to the 1 July 2016 you will be privy to a wealth of information surrounding the issue of transport, including transport costs, restrictions, legalities, and regulations.

This information has been supplied by Benchmark Leasing – a company which specialises in the leasing of school minibuses and without whom LOtC Week and the research conducted ahead of the Week’s launch would not be possible.

I do hope you will take a look at the LOtC Week website (www.learningoutside.info/) and take advantage of all it has to offer. And if you find we haven’t covered a particular topic, please do email Jenny Burrows at <a href=”mailto:HQ@LearningOutside.info”