The folk that run Learning Outside the Classroom say you can improve personal development through learning outside the classroom. Well, I suppose they would, just as you can do this in all sorts of other ways – such as inside the classroom. It's recent mailing to members and supporters said:
With the new Ofsted Common Inspection Framework including an increased focus on personal development, now is the ideal time to look at your learning outside the classroom (LOtC) provision and think about how you can improve pupils’ personal development through LOtC activities.
Learning outside the classroom can help to develop pupils’:
- spiritual awareness by developing the use of creativity and imagination in their learning through encountering a wide range of experiences and stimuli;
- moral understanding by giving real world context to moral and ethical issues to help them understand different viewpoints;
- social skills by enabling them to participate in a variety of communities and social settings;
- cultural engagement by giving them access to a wide variety of cultural experiences.
Evidence shows that LOtC can also improve pupils’ attainment, improve behaviour and increase engagement with learning.
Whilst I am sure it can, but everybody says things like this and LOtC seems to be clutching at Ofsted straws here, with circular phrases such as "cultural engagement by giving them access to a wide variety of cultural experiences" are just rather pathetic.
So, what's special about being outside? Does LOtC know? The last Ofsted report on all this was in 2008 and now looks dated – well, it was two governments ago, which seems like a generation.
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