FSC Campaigns and Research

Promoting Fieldwork and Outdoor Learning

In 1943, the FSC’s founders recognised the life-inspiring opportunities which residential trips could provide for children from London and other cities. The FSC emerged, literally, from the ruins of world conflict and it is particularly appropriate for the organisation, over 60 years later, to act as a lead organisation in providing residential courses for schools from all over London, as part of the DfES London Challenge project. The FSC’s founders would applaud the vision shown by current leaders in supporting these trips.

The FSC is a pioneering charity which has had a remarkable impact on many of the 2.5 million people who have visited its field centres. There are still many challenges for the FSC and its partners, however. Until recently, the FSC has not been a vocal campaigning body but growing pressures on biology fieldwork and outdoor learning have shown that there is a very important role for bodies such as the FSC to take a lead in championing the rights and opportunities for people of all ages and interests to experience their environment at first hand.

The FSC has joined with partners to lead in two campaigns. The first, Save Our Biology, aims to reverse the continuing decline in science and biology fieldwork in secondary schools. It is already well under way and its activities will continue to focus on critical areas of concern. The much broader campaign, Real World Learning, aims to demolish barriers to out-of-classroom learning for children of all ages. Both will be vital in delivering the vision that flourished sixty years ago.