Quality Badge routes

To ensure that the LOtC Quality Badge is fit for purpose, it is essential that safety and risk management are assessed at the right level.

The route providers take to achieve the Quality Badge will be determined by the degree of risk management required to manage the activities offered. Providers will not be able to choose the route they take; the route will be determined by the activities they offer.

Route 1

Some activities and venues fall within the scope of everyone’s experience, such as visits to theatres, art galleries, museums, historic houses, science learning centres, botanic gardens or places of worship. Here the risks are of an ‘everyday’ kind and are well within the experience of well trained school staff.

These providers will follow a Route 1 process where the Quality Badge is awarded when all the quality indicators can be met following the completion of an online Self Evaluation Form and the signing of a Code of Practice declaration form. There will be annual quality assurance visits to a proportion of badged providers to ensure standards are maintained at an appropriate level. And, of course, there will also be appropriate processes for visitors to raise concerns should they feel that a provider is failing to maintain the agreed standard.

Route 2

Other activities require a degree of technical knowledge and experience that are beyond the lay person, such as visits to farms, knowing which beaches are safe to use for field studies at certain states of the tide, or how to ensure a group of children are operating safely on a high ropes course or a circus trapeze.

Providers of these activities will follow Route 2, where their safety management systems will be assessed by external agencies before they can be awarded the Quality Badge. They will still have to meet the same criteria for ensuring quality as the providers following Route 1.

Five sector-specific Awarding Bodies will be undertaking the onsite assessments on behalf of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom.

Although residential and overseas activities are within the experience of many people, the suitability of venues further afield, travel and accommodation in which groups of young people stay present unique safety management issues for teachers, and so these are included in Route 2.

For a full list of activities covered/assessed via Route 2, please click here.

Are you Route 1 or Route 2? Click on the relevant button below. If you are unsure, please contact us.