School trips can bring terrific cultural benefits for students, says Robin Gainher, headmaster of Beeston Hall School in West Runton
This week some of our children have been lucky enough to visit the Norwich Islamic Centre and the Alphonse Mucha Art Exhibition at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich. Broadening children’s cultural experiences outside the classroom is a must.
While there are the inevitable paperwork and risk assessments to sort through prior to any out of school visit, the benefits for the children, and for the accompanying staff, far outweigh this inconvenience. The children always come back full of interesting stories about their trip and they talk animatedly among themselves about what they’ve seen. And this is really beneficial because it’s just casual conversation about something they’ve shared and enjoyed together. We underestimate this at our peril.
It’s easy for schools to find reasons not to organise trips out of school because of the rules and regulations involved and to forget the real benefits of children experiencing something completely different. Ask any of the children who’ve been on one of the trips this week and you will see their eyes light up as they tell you all about their best bits.
Our responsibility as educators is to provide a rich learning experience for the children in our schools. Long may this element of teaching remain.
