**NEW MARCH 2024**
At St Bede’s we are pleased to offer a broad, challenging and engaging curriculum. As part of this we endeavour to provide a range of trips and visits that are intended to positively engage, educate and inspire our pupils.
We appreciate that having an overview of the trips as early as possible helps with the planning and preparation for these valuable experiences.
This part of the website is designed to:
Share our intent regarding trips and visits.
Provide information on each trip or visit.
Give you the opportunity to plan financially for the commitment.
Understand how the trips are planned progressively and the thinking behind that.
Understand that trips and visits offer a wide range of benefits to our pupils and staff.
At St Bede’s we live out our mission which is “We are working together to be our best in learning, love, service and worship.”
This relates directly to our approach to trips.
Together - trips build relationships and the ability to develop and maintain relationships with teachers, peers and people from outside our organisation.
Develop our understanding of other communities, countries and to think globally.
To be our best- to develop our personal skills of resilience, independence and teamwork and to live life to the full.
Learning- Some of our trips will link directly to our taught curriculum. These are aimed at broadening knowledge and skills as well as appreciation and enjoyment of our world and the people in it.
Love- foster a love and appreciation for our planet and the people that occupy it.
Worship- we will organise trips and visits that develop both the educational, moral and spiritual elements of our pupil.
We classify the trips we do into the following categories to ensure we offer a breadth of different trips but also to show how each trip is specifically designed to meet the needs of our pupils.
Our approach is supported by research carried out into the benefits of educational trips especially residential ones.
You can access it here.
LA-Final-Report-May-2015-1.pdf (learningaway.org.uk)
“The main impacts on peer relationships (identified in focus groups) were: the opportunities residentials provided for students to develop new peer relationships, including vertical relationships across age groups; the development of more trusting and respectful relationships between students, including a change in existing power relationships; and opportunities for students to develop social skills, as well as skills to form relationships”
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2015.
There are some other more contemporaneous studies that you can read here:
The Educational Value of Field Trips in 2024: Advantages and Disadvantages | Research.com
Could school trips help boost student mental health? | Tes
Learning-Away-Comparative-Research-Report.pdf (learningaway.org.uk)
“There is an increasing body of evidence from a number of robust comparative studies that learning outside the classroom impacts on pupil progress and achievement in primary schools both directly and indirectly by impacting on intra-personal and inter-personal non-cognitive functions.” (pg 17 of the above report)
These are shown below:
Relationships: residentials can foster deeper student teacher/adult and student relationships that can be sustained back in schools and result in improved learner engagement and progress/achievement
Resilience: Self confidence and Wellbeing: residentials can significantly improve students’ resilience, self-confidence and sense of wellbeing.
Engagement with Learning: residentials can significantly improve students’ engagement with their learning, leading to improved school attendance and behaviour.
Achievement: residentials can boost attainment in SATs and GCSE qualifications in the core subjects of English, math and science.
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding: residentials can significantly improve student knowledge, understanding and skills in a wide range of curriculum areas at the primary and secondary phase.
Cohesion: residentials can significantly boost cohesion, interpersonal relationships and a sense of belonging across schools/communities.
Leadership, Codesign and Facilitation: residentials can offer rich opportunities for student leadership, codesign and facilitation of learning that can be extended and sustained back in school to positive effect.
Transition: residentials can significantly improve students’ transition experiences.
Pedagogical Skills (Staff): residentials can enable teachers in primary and secondary schools to widen and develop their pedagogical skills in ways that support learner engagement and progress/attainment.
We will shortly be publishing a link to information on our proposed trips next year (2024/2025).