Meeting of the Parliament 16 December 2025 [Draft]
I am delighted to stand in support of my colleague and friend Liz Smith’s Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill.
Sometimes, we lose sight of what we mean by “education” and what we are trying to achieve through it. It is too easy for us in Parliament to get wrapped up in exam results. Increasingly, we seem to be less involved in teaching and learning and, increasingly, we push testing. Standardised testing is important, of course, but it should not be the dominant culture in education. Testing should be a diagnostic and a help. Tests are there to support learning, not to obstruct it.
The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning, and our teachers are experts in that—it is the fire that compelled them down the educator pathway. However, I fear that we have been forcing our teachers to follow a set path that squeezes the alternative routes to learning and is increasingly devoid of creativity, ensuring an approach of compliance and standardisation. What is a standard child? Everybody learns in a different way. The art of teaching—and it is an art—is in developing different learning approaches that include all pupils.
Teachers are brilliant, if given the tools and the opportunity, due to their ability to excite the power of imagination and curiosity—the power of what could be—and to engender creativity. We all know that feeling, at least until society gets the opportunity to stick its oar in and stifle blue-sky thinking and imagination, talking about what we cannot do instead of what is possible.
To me, the epitome of what my friend and colleague Liz Smith’s outdoor education bill is about is that it gives every pupil the opportunity of an alternative learning experience, because what initially sparks the fire in them will be different for every pupil. Teachers know how to teach. Build a raft or paddle a canoe—what a fantastic way to introduce physics and the Archimedes’ principle. How about flying down a zipline to introduce and discuss gravity? While pushing the creative element and taking a leap of faith, pupils approach new challenges that they might never have even considered but now have to solve. Give pupils an obstacle to overcome, let them work together to find the solution as a team and give them that lifelong, shared experience that I have often spoken about. I would call that, in sporting parlance, deductive coaching.
It is ever more apparent that the elements of our education system that support expression—the alternative routes to achievement and the things that help to build resilience, confidence and a drive to aspire—are being squeezed out of our education system. Sport, art, music, drama and outdoor education create an alternative learning environment that will allow some pupils to thrive and flourish in a way that they might struggle to achieve in a traditional classroom. Those lessons outside the classroom are so important to delivering and achieving in the classroom.
It is time to stop forcing our young people down an ever narrowing education tunnel that fits a decreasing number of pupils. It is time to give back to our educators the full suite of tools for teaching, to allow them to deliver all that they can and are more than willing to deliver. In our education system, we are trying to tackle poor physical and mental health, poor attainment and poor behaviour. A narrow, compliant learning experience, devoid of a space for creative thinking and of a place to try, fail and try again, is a learning environment in which many pupils will struggle to be the best that they can be. Moreover, the chances of full pupil engagement are unlikely.
Outdoor education is an adventure and, goodness me, our young people need some adventure. It is a learning environment in which they do not even realise that they are learning. It is a world of possibilities. It is an opportunity that all our pupils deserve. I urge members to support Liz Smith’s bill.
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