The changing ways that children and young people engage with outdoor learning as they develop physically and in terms of maturity can have an effect on the way that practitioners consider their approach to managing risk.
There are no hard and fast rules here, and instead a pragmatic but flexible approach should be taken to considering how best to proceed.
While it is important to consider a child’s learning journey through Scottish education as a whole, there are lines of progression that have developed in outdoor learning practice which can help us to think about the ways in which we engage children and young people with the outdoors, and about how we approach health and safety.
The trend here is that as children and young people develop they generally become more capable of engaging with more adventurous outdoor learning activities, which sometimes take place further from home. As additional opportunities are presented, it is important that practitioners adjust their approaches to risk management.
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