Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2020
I echo the thanks to Liz Smith for securing the debate. The issue is a crucial one that will affect our ability to educate our young people in a fundamental sense.
At the start of the previous century, there was a transformation in thinking about the outdoors as it relates to education. Kurt Hahn and others led the way in arguing that the outdoors should not be something extra to education but should be core; that, by learning about the outdoors, one learns about resilience; and that—this is important—by learning about how to live in the outdoors, one gains a more holistic sense of learning than one does by merely learning in the classroom.
A hundred years later, it was a bold and important move to include those understandings in the curriculum for excellence, as Bruce Crawford stated. We may use different language from the words and phrases that were used by people 100 years ago, but the ideas of breadth and holistic learning are very much embedded in curriculum for excellence.
Outdoor learning should no longer be regarded as extracurricular but should be seen as core to the curriculum. The irony, given that we have only recently made that step forward and embedded the understandings that outdoor education is essential to learning and not peripheral to it, is that we now find that outdoor education and outdoor education centres are under threat.
The benefits of residential outdoor education are important to emphasise, and Liz Smith brought those to life in her remarks. We have all experienced the richness of learning through camping trips and hiking in the hills. It is through the application of knowledge of the outdoors that we learn a much broader set of skills—true life skills. Indeed, we now know the important role that being outdoors and learning about the outdoors have in mental health.
Critically, the curriculum for excellence says that there should be mixed provision and that outdoor education should not simply be provided by schools. That is why the crisis that the organisations face, with the potential loss of outdoor centres, is such a serious issue in terms of our ability to deliver outdoor education as a whole.
Let us be clear: this crisis is pronounced and it is serious. Some of the organisations are saying that facing another six months, let alone another 12 months of restrictions will cause them to be in crisis, leading to the loss of assets that have taken decades to build up.
The consequences are stark. We will lose skills. Staff are already being consulted about redundancy. Organisations are looking at closing centres in order to meet the costs that they have been unable to avoid through the months of lockdown.
Let us also be clear that the Scottish Government’s interventions have fallen short. I understand what Bruce Crawford said in his remarks—limitless finances are not available. However, let us also be clear that the third sector resilience fund fell short when it came to outdoor education organisations. When they made their applications, they were told that they did not qualify. We need the Scottish Government urgently either to look again at extending the schemes, or to come up with new schemes to provide the support that the organisations need, because, as Liz Smith put it, if we lose them, we will lose them for ever.
17:28