Outdoor adventures: Key policy developments

However, just 23 per cent of eight- to 15-year-olds did outdoor activities other than PE most or every day, down from 30 per cent in 2021. Among those who had spent time in green spaces the week preceding the survey, 72 per cent played in private gardens and 64 per cent a field or playground.

The research also illustrates children’s connection to and enjoyment in nature. From seven pictures which depicted different levels of closeness to nature, 47 per cent of children and young people chose ones showing high connection to nature to describe themselves. Some 87 per cent of children and young people agreed that being in nature made them very happy.

There is little evidence so far of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on children’s access to outdoor activities. However, 2020 research by Natural England found a quarter of people from the 10 per cent most deprived areas of the country rarely or never visit the countryside compared with just one in 10 people from the 10 per cent least deprived areas. Key barriers to accessing outdoor activities include the cost, transport difficulties and lack of confidence, according to analysis by the Sutton Trust.

“Whether youngsters immerse themselves in nature within their localities or a broader outdoor residential experience, natural settings provide a sense of freedom, an awareness crystallised by the pandemic lockdowns,” says Dr John Allan, visiting fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, which has undertaken research on the impact of outdoor adventures (OA).

“Nature exposure is shown to improve children’s concern for the environment, motor skill abilities, and wider learning, particularly on tasks requiring attention, working memory and collaborations with others. Importantly, this is not just the case for more capable and motivated youngsters; children who underachieve at school also perform better in a natural environment, especially when exposed to high-quality, stimulating activities.”

School children engaged in nature-based learning also have better attendance and academic achievement (in comparison to their peers or projected attainment) in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies, and are more intrinsically motivated, according to Natural England, 2023 research.

Trends in provision

The Field Studies Council says outdoor education should be an “essential” part of every childhood. For this to happen requires sufficient time and resources, but a survey of outdoor education providers shows a third saw a decline in turnover in 2022 while more than half were pessimistic about the prospects for the rest of the decade due to rising costs and cuts to government spending.

Some of these concerns have been borne out recently. At the end of last year, youth charity Girlguiding closed five activity centres – Blackland Farm, Foxlease, Glenbrook, Waddow Hall and Ynysgain – which were used for both local unit meetings and large-scale camps. The organisation attributes its decision to concerns around sustainability, saying the centres would require investment of more than £20m and had high running costs, and points to the fact that just 10 per cent of members used them over the last decade. The charity says it will use money generated from the sale of the centres to “support Girlguiding activities, adventure for girls and for a range of purposes”.

In March, Nottingham City Council approved plans to close Colwick Park Activity Centre in a bid to save £53m including a saving of just over £4m in children’s services spending. The eco-friendly centre, which sits on a 250-acre site, provided outdoor, environmental and adventurous educational activities since 2005. It offered adventures to schools, youth groups and children who were home schooled. Bradford Council are doing the same with its Ingleborough Hall outdoor learning centre to address a budget shortfall.

Many outdoor education providers are looking to diversify their offer to remain financially sustainable. Cornwall-based outdoor learning provider BF Adventure has begun to offer public camping onsite. However, this means uniformed youth groups can no longer use the site for large camps that require use of a full site, such as jamborees.

Large outdoor adventure operator PGL has launched a new range of summer residential experiences including bush craft, learning to drive, dance performances and a “mad science” camp for teenagers.

Bethia McNeil, chief executive at YMCA George Williams College, says the financial squeeze is making it more difficult to secure adequate venues for outdoor adventure breaks. “On a very basic level, it’s getting harder to run those kinds of activities, because they involve the additional costs associated with buildings, either running or hiring them,” she says.

Funding initiatives

Launched in 2022, the government’s National Youth Guarantee includes a pledge for every young person in England to access adventures away from home by 2025. It also sets out plans to invest £300m in youth services infrastructure through the Youth Investment Fund, which although largely focused on improving access to youth clubs in local communities has also provided grants to some large-scale outdoor learning projects.

One such initiative is Whitely Wood Outdoor Activity Centre, which delivers activity-based residential opportunities to children and young people in partnership with Girlguiding and Scouting groups, as well as schools and other youth groups. Thanks to a successful bid to the fund a derelict 300-year-old Grade II listed cottage is being renovated and existing facilities upgraded to provide a safe residential space for young people. Activities offered at the centre include camping, kayaking, climbing and high-ropes, archery, coracle building, fencing and team building.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) and National Citizen Service (NCS) offer young people from all backgrounds the opportunity to experience adventures away from home as part of an outdoor learning programme. Both are widely promoted through schools, with DofE aiming to be available through every school in England by 2025. The NCS programme, despite experiencing budget cuts in the last public sector spending review, offers young people from disadvantaged backgrounds the chance to participate in a five-day residential in the summer holidays as part of a four-week project – and has just completed the second year of its winter programme.

Other funding pots for outdoor learning include the Adventures Away from Home Fund, a £1.5m Department for Culture, Media and Sport initiative to offer bursaries for 11- to 18-year-olds who are experiencing hardship to take part in outdoor learning activities this spring. This is the second year the fund, managed by UK Youth, has operated. It is anticipated that more than 10,000 young people will have taken part across the two rounds.

The Scouts offer grants of £100 for groups to take part in adventure activities and the Ernest Cook Trust offers grants of up to £1,000 to schools through its Outdoor Essentials Grant, which can pay for the cost of travel, equipment to access trips or funding to improve outdoor spaces at schools. Priority is to schools in deprived areas. Another significant source of funding over the past decade for outdoor adventures has been the Dormant Accounts Fund, which has enabled millions of pounds of funding to go to uniformed youth groups.

Campaigning for change

Last December, a group of 36 national governing bodies and environmental organisations joined together to support an Outdoors For All manifesto, with the aim of seeking to extend “access to more green and blue landscapes”. The initiative aims to “help connect the present and future generation with nature and to create a lasting love, respect and understanding of the outdoors”. There are several measures in the manifesto targeted at boosting support for young people including a call on policymakers to ensure all children are given the opportunity to spend regular time in nature, at school and at each stage of their education so that “every child has an equal right to participate in outdoor activity”.

The manifesto also recognises the need to foster a love of outdoor play at a young age and calls for an understanding of nature “and essential outdoor life skills such as risk-benefit assessment, self-sufficiency, navigation and swimming” to be embedded in early years learning and throughout schooling. The growth of the Forest Schools movement in recent years among early years providers shows there is widespread recognition in the sector of the important role outdoor learning plays in children’s early development, and some settings are making adventures outdoors a core aspect of their offer.

Meanwhile, last year Tim Farron MP presented a private members bill in the House of Commons which would have given every child an outdoor education experience. Although the bill did not progress, it helped highlight the importance of outdoor adventures to parliamentarians and the benefits it can bring to children.

Children’s outdoor learning may not feature heavily in the forthcoming general election but many crosscutting issues such as physical and mental health and wellbeing, educational attainment and access to positive activities will do. Sector leaders are hopeful that whichever party forms the next government they are supportive of increasing access to outdoor learning opportunities for all children.

“Outdoor adventures and nature-based learning, provides a platform for impactful, authentic experiences which embolden personal growth and should be considered a fundamental part of the fabric of everyday life and included as part of education, health, policy, and planning,” says Dr Allan.

Expert view: Adults must give children freedom to roam

Dave Scourfield is an educational visits advisor at Rochdale and Bury Borough Councils and trustee at the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom.

There appears to be a lack of confidence amongst school communities in allowing children to go and experience things. That’s exacerbated by technology which in the main is a positive thing, but a side effect is that children tend to be more isolated now.

Children understand less how to play together. They spend less time in those social environments so their interaction skills are less developed and one of the key ways that we can address that is to get children and staff together outside and providing positive activity.

The people and nature survey looks at children’s and young people’s engagement with nature. What that’s clearly signalling is that those that come from lower income households do not have the same experiences as those that come from higher income households.

Reports from the Commission on Young Lives and the APPG on Children of the North highlighting that we appear to have widening inequalities which is just not acceptable. Every child and young person needs to have opportunities to have experiences that benefit them.

There is a resource we have used in training based on research from Sheffield that shows the freedom to roam of different generations at the age of 10. For a great grandfather the radius was it was something like three miles – they had this enormous area to roam across Sheffield including woodland, water environments, the town centre. Whereas for the boy who was 10 at the time of the study, his freedom to roam was 300 metres. He would just go down the road.

People interpret the world as a riskier place but I don’t think there’s evidence to support that. The way things are reported makes people feel anxious and consequently their comfort zone shrinks and the roaming zone for their child shrinks. There’s a lot of pressure to feel that we need to provide things all the time whereas children quite often don’t need any of that. What they need is freedom.