School trips - they don't happen any more do they? Well, seven million pupil visits took place last year, but it's fair to say that there's major concern that young people are missing out on this type of learning opportunity.
A report by Parliament's Education and Skills Select Committee released in late January was very effusive about the value of learning outside the classroom but found opportunities to be "extremely patchy" and the sector to be suffering from "considerable unexploited potential".
Are they talking about more than just geography field trips? Absolutely.
The report speaks about the range of opportunities in local communities as well as visiting places such as mountains or going on canoeing trips. MPs acknowledged that these trips not only backed up academic learning, but also had many benefits more familiar to youth work, such as improving the "soft skills" of otherwise hard-to-reach and hard-to-inspire young people. According to MPs, group activities build self-confidence and teach young people how to deal with elements of risk.
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