DfE (and Ofsted) have responded to the House of Commons Education Committee inquiry Transforming Education Outside the Classroom. Annex 2 begins:
Progress since 2004:
1. Under the previous Administration, significant progress was made in bringing together organisations with an interest in promoting learning outside the classroom. These organisations have worked together on guidance and support for schools and on the development of the Quality Badge accreditation scheme under the direction of a new Council for Learning Outside the Classroom.
2. The Department for Education had a role to play in bringing the organisations together and pump-priming key developments. However, this Government believes that the time has come, as was always planned, for the Department to withdraw and leave the Council and member organisations to work directly with schools and learning outside the classroom providers.
3. We agree with the Committee about the importance of learning outside the classroom. But we also believe it should be for schools to decide how to teach and what mediums to use to deliver that teaching. This includes learning outside the classroom which, like learning within the classroom, should be a matter for teachers’ professional judgement and not something prescribed by central government or imposed on schools through bureaucratic requirements.
4. We are not therefore able to accept those recommendations of the Committee which call for additional resources, government regulation, monitoring or guidance.
5. We want to ensure that schools have the maximum freedom to teach in the way that they judge best for their pupils, including through Learning Outside the Classroom activities, and we are ready to explore how to increase school freedom in this regard by, for example, reviewing the constraints flowing from unnecessary Health and Safety red tape or from teachers’ pay and conditions.
etc.
Tricky, isn't it, when you want professional autonomy and freedom of action for schools and teachers, but you'd also like your own special interests fed, watered and promoted (always with the conviction that they are absolutely necessary at this time ...).
It will be worth watching how long Mr Gove can keep the bat straight when the wicket begins to cut up a bit.
Progress
Respond