Information and Downloads for Schools
If you’ve already booked a camp with us, this page contains all the information, downloads and forms you'll need to get your school ready for your amazing camping experience.
Can’t download a file?
Some school IT systems block downloads. You’ll find a backup link below for most of our files or please contact us and we’ll send you the documents you need.
All downloads on this page are copyright The Outdoors People CIC and cannot be reused or repurposed for events not related to our camps. Our Free Educational Resources are licensed under a Creative Commons License and can be found here.
Contents
Camp Preparation
Advice on preparing for a camp, parents evening presentations, and letters for parents and guardians.
The Paperwork
Risk assessments, safety policies, quality badges, and insurance documents.
Forms
Download consent forms, design your camp, and give feedback.
Educational Resources
Linking your camp to the national curriculum and resources to use for your lesson planing.
Legal
Our inclusion and safeguarding policies and our Terms and Conditions.
Camp Preparation
Camping Information Pack
Our Camping Information pack contains lots of information to help schools prepare for their camping experience.
If you are interested in booking a camp with us, more information on what our camps involve can be found here.
Click here to view our 2024 Camping Information Pack for schools.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
School Camp Information Sheet
It’s very important that parents and guardians receive information about what the camp involves. This is a condition of your booking with us.
In order to reduce printing costs and save on energy and paper usage, many schools prefer to direct parents and guardians to our Information for Parents and Guardians page. This page includes an easy to use, and very popular, interactive version of our kit list.
Alternatively, click here to view the Information Sheet and Kit List for Parents and Guardians in a printable PDF format.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
Tent List
You can use this list to help you plan which students will be sharing a tent.
Click here to view it.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
As part of preparing for your overnight camp, you will want to put together a risk assessment that considers practical risks for staying on your school site overnight, as well considering any specific safeguarding concerns. Our checklist and guidance on this should help you get started.
Our own camping and activity risk assessments can be found below.
School Camp PowerPoint Presentation
Click here to download The Outdoors People 2020 School Camp PowerPoint presentation. A lot of schools like to use this when talking to parents about what our camps involve.
It is designed for you to add to and modify to better suit your schools needs and has a blank page at the end for this reason.
This presentation is the one used by our management team if you ask us to deliver a parents evening for you. Our digital parents evenings are free and are available from October to March. Our in person parents evenings cost £50 and are available between November and February. We are based in York so out-of-area charges may apply.
Link blocked by your network? Contact us.
Sample Programme
This is a sample programme for you to refer to when planning your camp. Most schools choose a 3 pm to 3 pm camp like this one.
You can use your Camp Creation Form to let us know about the activities and timings you would like on your camp. You can also use the form to tell us if there are any specific learning, social, or developmental outcomes you would like us to work towards. Some schools like to involve the children in the process of designing their camp.
Click here to view the sample programme.
Or, click here to download it.
Payment Schedules
Please see our terms and conditions for more detailed information.
30% deposit payments are due within 14 days of your booking being made.
Final payment of balance is due 60 days before your event.
Cancellations and reductions in booking size:
Please ask for a “hardship variation” on behalf of yourself or your students, if you feel that a larger credit or refund is needed.
A discount is normally available for students who do not take part in the full event.
If you reduce the size of your event by less than 20%, a full credit or refund would normally be offered for the difference.
If you reduce the size of your event by more than 20%, the difference will be treated as a cancellation.
If you cancel more than 180 days in advance, we will issue a full refund less a small administration fee.
If you cancel 31 days or more in advance, we will issue a full refund minus the 30% deposit.
If you cancel 30 days or less in advance, no refund is normally available.
The Paperwork
Sun Safe Schools
We are promoting the Sun Safe Schools campaign!
Sun safety is now part of the National Curriculum and something that we at The Outdoors People are very keen on! With the children outside all day on our camps, it’s important that to make sure that they can reapply their sunscreen regularly, have access to sun hats and sun glasses, and have plenty of water or juice.
Our risk assessment and insurance allows us to issue hypoallergenic suncream to children unless you, or parents or guardians, ask us not to.
If you want help creating a Sun Safety Policy, you can visit the Sun Safe Schools website.
2020 School Camp Risk Assessment
Click here to view the School Camp Risk Assessment for our 204 camps.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
As part of preparing for your overnight camp, you will want to put together a risk assessment that considers practical risks for staying on your school site overnight, as well considering any specific safeguarding concerns. Our checklist and guidance on this should help you get started.
Are we visiting you over the winter months? Click here to view our Winter Residentials Supplemental Risk Assessment.
Or, click here to download it.
If we are running our Traditional Fire Lighting or Knife Craft sessions for you, then we will be bringing knives and small saws suitable for bushcraft and wood carving. These are kept in secure lock boxes when not in use. Click here to view our Advanced Cutting Tools Supplemental Risk Assessment.
Or, click here to download it.
Click here to view the Insurance Certificate for The Outdoors People.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
Our insurance renews annually at the beginning of JULY.
Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge
The Outdoors People hold an LOtC Quality Badge from the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. This is the quality assurance pathway recommended by the Department for Education as it assures schools of both our educational outcomes and our safety standards. The LOtC Quality Badge means that schools may not have to complete Provider Forms for the EVOLVE database or their Local Education Authority when camping with The Outdoors People.
Click here to view our quality badge.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Contact us.
Forms
School Camp Creation Form
Once we have confirmed your booking, you can use this page to help us create the perfect camp for your school and to choose which of our outstanding activities you would like.
Winter RESIDENTIALS
The camp creation form for our Winter Residentials, can be found here.
Most schools use their standard “school trips” consent form
You’ll need to make sure you have consent forms, medical, and dietary information for all the children taking part in the camp. This is a condition of your booking with us.
We are outside all day so it’s a really good idea to make sure you have consent for giving suncream to the children. Our risk assessment and insurance allows us to issue hypoallergenic suncream to children unless you, or parents or guardians, ask us not to.
Most of our schools use their standard “consent for school trips and other off-site activities” form – such as the one available on the .gov.uk website – that your parents and guardians may have already completed.
You’re also welcome to use our consent form if you prefer. Click here to view it in a printable PDF format.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
For data protection reasons, you don’t need to provide us with copies of consent forms unless we are logging an accident or incident involving a participant. We’ll make sure we have any key information when we arrive.
If we need to complete an Accident, Incident, or Near Miss form for a participant, we will ask to scan a copy of their consent form. You are welcome to redact personal details on the form for data protection reasons so long as it still shows their full name.
You will need to keep a record of the completed forms for four years.
Your thoughts on your school camp
We think our camps are the best camps around, but there's always room for improvement. Please click here to let us know what you thought of your experience with The Outdoors People.
After removing identifying information, we publish all our feedback on our website every year. You can see previous years here.
GET FREE ACTIVITIES FOR YOUR SCHOOL!
We think the best way to hear about our camps is from your friends and colleagues. If you know another school or organisation that might be interested in booking with us, we'd love you to have a chat with them.
We'd love it so much, that if they go on to book a camping experience with The Outdoors People, then we'll give you one of our premium sessions completely free on your next camp with us!
Educational Resources
KS2 Curriculum Links
Click here to see how our camps link to the Key Stage 2 Curriculum.
Or, click here to download it.
Link blocked by your network? Contact us.
Our Educational Resources and Downloads for Schools page looks in more detail at the Key Learning Outcomes for our core activities and contains information about the linked learning that can be taken from our activities and ways to apply it to the curriculum. There’s also free downloads of many of the resources we use to support our amazing programmes.
We also adapt our programmes and activities to your needs. If there's something specific you would us to cover, please let us know when you complete your schools Camp Creation form or contact us!
Our camps are validated with the Children’s University. Please contact us for our code so that your students can add their learning to their Children’s University Online Account.
Legal
The Outdoors People are actively involved in campaigning for the rights of marginalised groups and deliver industry recognised awareness and inclusion training. We strive to be industry leaders in this area and our inclusion policy can be viewed by clicking here.
School Camp Terms and Conditions
Click here to view our Terms and Conditions for school camp bookings.
Or, click here to download them.
Link blocked by your network? Click here, or contact us.
Final payment is due 60 days before your camp.
We have made more changes this year than normal. Updates to our Terms and Conditions for 2024 are:
Due to issues with late payments from some schools, final payment is now due 60 days before an event.
We have made it clearer that that The Outdoors People cannot usually complete site specific safeguarding paperwork – though we still complete all safeguarding checks and make these available to our schools. Our safeguarding policy can be found at: www.theoutdoorspeople.com/safeguarding.
Schools are now asked to introduce additional control measures, or have active monitoring of hazards and risks in-place, if indoor spaces that might be used overnight don’t meet the legal or recommended “accommodation”standards for fire/smoke detection equipment or evacuation routes.
The Outdoors People are conscious of the impact of the cost of living crisis on schools and families. Schools can now ask for a “hardship variation” on behalf of themselves or their students, if they feel that a larger credit or refund is needed.
We have improved our cancellation terms for customers and now offer a full refund for cancellations that are made 180 days before the first day of an event. We also now offer a full refund after this if we are able to replace a cancelled event with one of equivalent or greater value.
Post-pandemic, we have had increased numbers of children choosing not to take part in a full overnight event. Sadly, this means that we have had to reduce how generous the discounts we offer for this are. Discounts are now a flat 20% of the per-person event price (i.e. if the event price is £40 per-person with a £7 per-person out-of-area-charge, the discount would apply to the £40 event price only).
Combined refunds or credit for changes to a booking made on short notice (less than 30 days), can’t any longer exceed 20% of the total booking price.
We have added a stipulation that we cannot generally issue a refund or credit if customer cancels due to weather conditions that are covered by our risk assessments or other policies.
Reflecting the change in status from “pandemic” to “remains a threat”, The Outdoors People no longer issues dedicated COVID19 terms and conditions. These will be reissued in the event of national or regional outbreaks affecting bookings. We still commit in our terms to protecting the full value of payments already received in the form of non-refundable credit.
We have introduced a limitation on the number of tents provided for a camp. We now ask that there should generally be no less than 8 children per tent.
Due to the weight and volume of the equipment we use, we have made it clearer that customers are obliged to provide vehicle access to the camping and activity area. If this is not available, The Outdoors People may need to offer a reduced programme of activities.
Minor edits throughout for clarity and brevity
