The incidence of youths getting injured or dying on educational and youth organisation visits in the UK was of some cause for concern in the 1990's. By the time I started digging around in the statistics I'd been teaching in schools and instructing expedition skills in the wider arena for decades. The statistics were frightening, and no-one was a) aware of the figures b) doing any research into cause and effect c) bringing any legislation into play. I decided to act. This meant painstaking research into records of the mountain rescue teams, ambulance trusts, police, newspapers, and county councils. It took years, but by the end of the millenium I was getting somewhere. I did a dozen programmes on BBC radio and stirred things up a bit, wrote some letters, asked some questions, and talked to a few people in high places. Absolutely no-one had any statistics on the situation. What did other countries do? What were their Codes of Practice? Were there laws here or anywhere?
I knew from my own experience that teachers nor youth workers were trained to lead off-site; there was no teacher training in educational visits. The 'nearest' qualification was a Mountain Leader ticket - great if you are leading a group on Snowdon but not a lot of good if you are canoeing down the Trent or walking the South Downs Way, or even just taking your group to theatreland in London for an evening out.
For me things happened quite quickly. Well 'quick' for the establishment. I'd chucked-in my status as Head of Geography in a large comprehensive school, transferring, with the blessing and support of the Governors and Head, to be i/c of Outdoor Education for the whole school: 1,800 pupils. I had a platform now to build a case. I'd already by now led hundreds of expeditions and day courses from dog-sledging with a NATO team across Greenland and instructing cold-weather survival in northern Norway to trekking through all of the UK mountains and leading school 'trips' to Iceland in winter conditions.
I'd been encouraged to apply for a Travelling Fellowship with the Churchill Trust but had to make a case as to why they should give me £6,000 to do some comparative studies on safety on educational off-site activities and visits. Somebody somewhere must have said some nice things about me because in 2002 I landed up being given the time off work, the whole six-grand, and a nice shiny Land Rover to go and play. Just as well because the fatalities amongst youth on these visits was now well into double figures per year, despite the UK's legislation on the Activity Centres (Young Persons’ Safety) Act 1995 and the subsequent (good) work of the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority.
I chose to go to Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and set up 30 or so meets with relevant agencies to pick their brains, stats, and practices about safety in the outdoors with youth; I planned to be away for three months, linking up the visits with a 10,000 kms journey, and get some climbing in too. Amongst other recipients of the report on my return was The Cabinet Office who requested details via my Home Team.
This website is the account of the journey.
Barry Howard
