EVOLVE Advice digest - educational visits news and updates

27 February 2025

In this week’s Digest, we look at:

National Guidance updates - visiting cities
DfE safety and safeguarding
Research briefing - outdoor learning and wellbeing
Science in your local area
Latest funding opportunities
Free webinar: Checking and vetting providers
Free EVOLVE training

Advice and guidance

New and updated National Guidance

NEW: Visiting cities

This week, OEAP published new National Guidance on visiting cities.

7.1j Visiting Cities is particularly aimed at groups visiting new cities or exploring areas of cities that they are unfamiliar with. It applies to UK and overseas visits and includes guidance on risk assessment, group management, communication and security awareness. It is also relevant for visits to large public venues such as markets, stadiums, events and festivals or large transport hubs.

Read our AdviceONLINE article about this guidance for a summary and key takeaways (click button below).

VISITING CITIES - SUMMARY

Further guidance updates: last month OEAP National Guidance revised four guidance documents, including:

Trampoline Parks guidance 7.1d (as noted in our previous digest);
Director of Children's Services guidance (3.4a) - corporate manslaughter section.

Five new Welsh translations were published in the 'Emergencies and Critical Incidents' guidance section (4.1) and Selecting and Using External Providers section (4.4)

For a full list of new and updated guidance, and details of the changes, click the button below.

OEAP NATIONAL GUIDANCE UPDATES

Keeping children safe in education settings – everything you need to know

DfE has published information to support schools in relation to safety, security and safeguarding.

Keeping children safe in education settings – everything you need to know specifically focuses on strategies for maintaining safety on the school site but should also be considered an important reminder of the importance of safety and safeguarding planning for offsite visits – if you have concerns or questions about how to prevent and manage incidents when on educational visits, including risk assessment related to external threats, check your employer’s policy and ask your Educational Visits Adviser for additional support if needed.

EVOLVE Advice offers training on preventing and managing incidents (e-learning) and live online visit emergencies training. Visit evolveadvice.co.uk/courses.

News

Outdoor learning and children’s wellbeing

Looking for evidence to support your educational visits?

A new research briefing from The UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology includes evidence for the impact of learning outside the classroom on children’s wellbeing (see p16). It has been produced in the context of the current progress of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which was introduced in December 2024.

Read the POST briefing here

You can find more research into the impact of educational visits and outdoor learning on the Evidence and Research page of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom’s website.

EVIDENCE AND RESEARCH

Get outside for British Science Week 2025

Looking ahead to March, British Science Week 2025 runs from 7-16 March. This year’s theme is ‘Change and adapt’.

You may already have day visits planned to coincide with this week, but have you also considered getting out into your local learning area to give your students the chance to put their learning into practice in the ‘real world’?

Watch our recorded webinar for advice on using, and risk assessing, your local learning area.

Spread the word

This Evolve Advice Digest is available to all EVCs, Visit Leaders, SLT and anyone else involved in educational visits. If you know someone who would benefit from receiving news and updates from us, please share this link so they can sign up.

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Funding & Offers

Closing soon:

Go Ape competition to win your school trip for free (closes midnight 28 February).

You’ll find this and other funding opportunities on our Funding Finder page. We share opportunities from grant making bodies, organisations and providers, with closing dates and relevant exclusions, to help ease the financial pressures on your educational visits.

VIEW FUNDING FINDER

Training and CPD

Webinar: Checking and Vetting Providers

19 March @ 11am

Advice on confidently choosing your educational visits providers. We’ll answer questions such as:

When planning your educational visits, how do you choose a provider?
Are you confident that they have the right measures in place to provide a safe, educational experience for your group?
What do you need to include in your risk management and planning?
What questions should you ask and how can you work positively with providers to plan your visit?

We'll also look at tools you can use to find providers who meet high quality standards, such as the LOtC Quality Badge and Kaddi.com.

Delivered by EVOLVE Advice with special guest speakers from CLOtC and Kaddi.

Featured Training

Free EVOLVE+ training

eduFOCUS, providers of EVOLVE, are joining us to deliver three practical sessions for EVOLVE users. The webinars will focus on EVOLVE+ (EVOLVE Plus) and are split into sessions for existing users and new users. Come along to discover what EVOLVE+ can do for you.

EVOLVE+ unlocks even more features to reduce time and admin in your visit planning, including:

seamless communication with parents
online consent collection
MIS link to student data, including medical needs

Pick the session that's right for you...

19 March a training session for existing users - we'll take you through the extra features and answer any questions you've got about using EVOLVE. REGISTER HERE

5 and 12 March a demo webinar for EVOLVE Lite users to see what EVOLVE+ offers and how it can help you streamline your educational visits management. REGISTER HERE

Educational visits training and development

EVOLVE Advice provides EVC Training; Visit Leader Training and e-learning; Snowsport Visits Training and Risk Assessment for Educational Visits.

FIND COURSES