At the beginning of December, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation agreed to provide a further two years of ‘legacy’ funding to Learning Away. The award was £215,000.  The funding has been awarded to a newly developed Learning Away Legacy Consortium, led by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (CLOtC).

After several planning and development meetings that took place throughout 2015, the consortium is now established as a partnership of identified organisations and advisors, who are united by their commitment to work together to:

1. Ensure a lasting legacy for the Learning Away programme;
2. Promote and champion residential learning to enable more young people to benefit from these experiences;
3. Ensure more effective and high quality residential experiences;
4. Develop as a leading voice for residential learning.

Members of the consortium have agreed to disseminate the outcomes of the Learning Away research in order to promote the concept of ‘brilliant residentials’, and to work collaboratively to secure additional funding to further these aims. The consortium is developing a five-year strategy (2016 – 2018) with these main objectives:

• To continue to make the case for and build the evidence base for brilliant residentials;
• To share learning of what we know works including a proactive campaign to take the research from the initial ‘action research’ phase to schools, providers and the wider public policy debate;
• To measure the success of the campaign against a series of outputs, having first established a baseline and monitoring framework;
• To create more resources to support schools to run brilliant residentials including access to CPD, practical tools and improving offers from providers;
• To create more resources to support providers to run brilliant residentials (including the development of new, cheaper or easier to access, models of provision).

In their proposal to PHF, the consortium made a strong case that the funding would therefore:

• Enable the Learning Away findings and evaluation evidence to be more widely disseminated to schools, influence their practice, and therefore result in more young people having residential experiences and of higher-quality;
• Support the potential for the longer-term sustainability of the Learning Away programme, as new funding and other income streams are developed by the consortium.
• Support the establishment of a effective, well-managed and sustainable consortium.

Practically, this new PHF funding will enable the consortium to:

• Implement a proactive Learning Away/Brilliant Residentials ‘campaign’ with a focus on influencing schools, residential providers and policy makers. The campaign will be launched early in 2016.

• Develop and pilot a shared CPD module for schools (using the learning developed by throughout the programme);

• Develop new Learning Away case studies and resources (including a brilliant residentials ‘toolkit’ for schools);

• Investigate opportunities for further research (e.g. into the impact of residentials on attainment and achievement) and test new models of delivery;

• Respond to relevant consultations to argue the value and impact of residential experiences;

• Establish a baseline of the number of young people currently accessing residentials.

Current members of the consortium are:

Organisations

• Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (CLOtC) – the lead organisation
• Association of Heads of Outdoor Education Centres (AHOEC)
• Brathay Trust
• British Activity Providers Association (BAPA)
• Field Studies Council (FSC)
• Institute for Outdoor Learning (IOL)
• Outdoor Education Advisers Panel (OEAP)
• Royal Geographical Society (RGS)
• The Scout Association
• Youth Hostels Association (YHA)

Advisors

• Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT)
• English Outdoor Council (EOC)