Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure the Government meets its commitments in the 2011 Natural Choice White Paper on (a) removing barriers to learning outdoors and (b) increasing the ability of schools to teach outdoors.

The Government has taken various steps to meet the Natural Environment White Paper’s commitments relating to learning outdoors.

These include new guidance from the Health and Safety Executive and the Department for Education to help address perceived barriers, reduce burdens and to make it easier for schools to take pupils on trips. We have part-funded the Natural Connections initiative to provide support and advice for teachers, children and parents interested in learning outdoors. This demonstration project, involving around 200 schools, was established in 2012 and runs to 2016.

We have continued to support Open Farm Sunday and have funded farmers in agri-environment scheme agreements providing educational visits to farms by schoolchildren up to the age of 16. More than 300,000 schoolchildren participated in educational visits to farms in agri-environment schemes in 2014.

We also established the Pupil Premium, which schools can use to support outdoor learning in the natural environment.