Click this link for the full article on the BBC News website.
BBC News Reported, Katherine Sellgren reported on 19th January 2011 that risk assessment reports are stopping students from benefitting from science field trips:
“The Association for Science Education (ASE) says too much attention to risk assessment means science field trips are in long-term continuing decline.
The ASE calls for exam boards to have greater flexibility to set questions that allow pupils to draw on their experiences of science in the outdoors.
It also says more fieldwork training should be given to trainee teachers.
The report warns: “Despite the strengths and advantages that fieldwork can bring to teaching at all ages, there has been a long-term and continuing decline in the provision and condition of outdoor education in science.”
Chief executive of ASE Annette Smith said that if trips meant teachers filling in endless forms, or if procedures for asking for parents’ permission for children to go on trips were not streamlined, organising a science outing could become unattractive.”
