Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2020
I warmly welcome the debate and thank Liz Smith for securing it. Perhaps it represents a timely bridge between her previous portfolio responsibility for education and her new role as environment spokesperson, to which I welcome her.
The huge outpouring of support for Scotland’s outdoor education centres and their staff in recent weeks should not surprise any of us. The permanent closure of the Ardeonaig centre near Killin came as a huge blow to schools that were planning to take their pupils there this year. Other centres such as the Belmont centre in Strathmore valley or the Dounans centre near Aberfoyle have not yet reached that point of crisis, but they and many others are struggling, and people are genuinely worried about the future.
At the moment, many centres are working hard to move to alternative, non-residential models, to ensure that some form of nature-based education can continue during the Covid crisis. That work will need the strongest level of support from both Government and councils to keep the outdoor education workforce working together over the next year. However, from speaking to many people in the sector, it is also clear that, without funding to effectively mothball centres in the short term, there is a serious risk that operators may be forced to offload buildings, centres and other facilities. Members will be aware that many of those buildings have long histories—they were often donated, and their resources built up through decades of fundraising and sweat equity. The cost of setting up those centres from scratch in 2020 would be absolutely astronomical, and run to millions and millions of pounds. Therefore, as well as providing support to deliver alternative models of education in the short term, funds must be put in place to mothball our outdoor centres for that period. That would ensure that providers are not forced into a position in which they need to sell their assets, they can maintain facilities for outdoor education to resume once the pandemic has passed, and residential visits can be confidently resumed again in full. I am talking about the need for thousands of pounds for staffing support, utilities and minor repairs, rather than the millions of pounds that would be needed to start from scratch and rebuild centres that have closed or been sold off.
It is clear that the centres cannot be lost—if that happened, outdoor education would be devastated. Each centre is as integral a part of the education estate as a school building. We do not take decisions to close schools lightly; therefore, we should not allow these centres to close by an unforeseen circumstance.
As part of a green, education-led recovery out of the Covid crisis, the opportunity for young people to discover the outdoors, and themselves again, could not be more important and vital for their future. If we do not act now, that opportunity will be lost to the generations who absolutely need it most. We need to act and save our outdoor centres.
17:37