A national policy, a local influence, a child's opportunity

This paper looks at how the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom policy advice document ‘Developing a learning Outside the Classroom’ is reflective of the wider neo liberalist approach toeducation in England today. ... [ view full abstract ]

This paper looks at how the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom policy advice document ‘Developing a learning Outside the Classroom’ is reflective of the wider neo liberalist approach toeducation in England today. Inparticular, the use of skill formation and investment in people asjustification for including a LOtC policy has direct links to Human CapitalTheory.  This paper looks at how the councilhas gone about influencing the wider outdoor learning policy agenda to make itacceptable to schools and stakeholders and find its niche with the use of socialimagery and playing on the perception of a cultural norm. Additionally, thepaper explores whether that fact that as outdoorlearning is predominately promoting ‘soft skills’ if these are given less of apriority than the so called hard skills’ of literacy and numeracy as softskills are harder to measure  resultingin CLOtC’s creation of performance measures as mentioned above.