Intention
We strongly believe in the value of school trips and the opportunities that they provide for students to expand their knowledge, broaden their horizons and develop and apply what they have learnt outside the school boundaries.
Implementation
Each year we run around 70 trips, covering over 110 school days, involving almost 3000 student days and the majority of our teaching and support staff. Clearly, all these trips involve a great deal of time and effort for staff to prepare and coordinate to ensure that they run smoothly and safely. They also depend on, and cannot run without, student cooperation on the trips and parental contributions towards their costs, for which we are very grateful. Parentmail is the main vehicle for communicating details about individual trips to parents. Further details about how we implement our learning outside the classroom can be found in our Trips and Visits Policy on the Policy page here. To view the trips and visit booklet, click here.
Impact
The benefits to pupils of taking part in our visits and learning outside the classroom are outlined in our Trips and Visits Policy. In summary they include:
- Increased critical curiosity and resilience
- Enhanced communication and problem-solving skills.
- Increased risk management skills encouraging pupils to become more risk aware as opposed to risk averse.
- Broadened horizons by introducing new activities, different cultures and environments.
- Improving environmental appreciation and awareness of the importance and practice of sustainability.
- Physical skill acquisition and the development of a fit and healthy lifestyle.
- Improved achievement and attainment across a range of curricular subjects.
- Allowing students to learn from experts.
Camps International
Camps International are global leaders in ethical and sustainable school expeditions and offer fully-supported life-enhancing school expeditions across Africa, Asia and South America.
Every school expedition offers a real and authentic cultural experience for every student who travels. The expeditions help to challenge their view of the world, understand the day to day challenges rural communities face, help work on projects which transform communities and help them overcome significant issues they face including access to clean water, education and housing. They also increase students' self-worth and appreciate the impact just one person can have on the world.
At QEHS, we understand that academic success is just one element of education. That’s why we offer experiences to our students that go beyond the classroom, allowing the opportunity to develop key life skills, cultural understanding and a global perspective for an increasingly international 21st century. This experience and the new skills that students learn provide them with details to strengthen university and job applications and experiences to reflect on at interview.
We travelled to Tanzania in 2017 and our expedition team went to Cambodia in July 2019 and Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands in 2022.
If you would like to know more about our Camps International School Expeditions, please contact Miss H Meneer for more information.
