Teaching outside the classroom provides a valuable opportunity for pupils to develop the personal creative skills, competencies and values that are increasingly important in the current education climate.

Placements in settings other than schools offer trainee teachers real opportunities to engage with current practice and develop:

• an understanding of teaching and learning in other settings
• the skills and enthusiasm to build partnerships with other professionals working with children and young people
• creative approaches to teaching and learning

The following benefits have been documented from placements that have happened so far.

Benefits for ITT providers
Benefits for settings other than schools
Benefits for trainee teachers
Benefits for pupils
Benefits for partner schools

Benefits for ITT providers

• Engage with current education agendas by providing new opportunities for trainee teachers to take a creative approach to teaching, learning and partnership working
• Develop the skills of teachers to work effectively with other professionals
• Connect with settings engaged in children and young people’s learning, both learning from and influencing their practice
• Promote education as a lifelong process that operates in a diverse range of settings
• Develop a network of mentors in settings engaged in children and young people’s learning
• Improve and diversify your offer to attract new trainee teachers and partner schools
• Have the opportunity to participate in a national evaluation of placements in settings other than schools
• Encourage more widespread use of educational opportunities outside the classroom
• Enable schools and those organisations that support learning outside the classroom to provide additional high quality experiences for all young people

Benefits for settings other than schools

• Develop lasting partnerships with teachers, schools and young people in your area
• Provide teachers with the opportunity to teach in diverse settings as part of their day-to-day practice
• Offer professional development opportunities for staff to be trained as mentors by ITT providers
• Attract new audiences and promote your venue
• Work in partnership with ITT providers and trainee teachers to develop your education programme
• Influence creative approaches to teaching and learning
• Encourage more widespread use of educational opportunities outside the classroom

Benefits for trainee teachers

• Increase capacity to teach creatively (using imaginative approaches to make learning more interesting, exciting and effective) and teach for creativity (developing young people’s own creative thinking and behaviour) through partnership working
• Develop an understanding of partnership working, and how and why to work with external organisations
• Develop the skills to take learning outside the classroom
• Increase innovation and curriculum development skills
• Increase ability to make links across subjects
• Develop knowledge of resources and provision for inspiring learning in out-of-school contexts
• Increase subject specialist knowledge by learning from professionals and settings outside school
• Access opportunities to analyse, observe and critically assess learning outside the classroom
• Develop understanding of diversity and personalising learning in different settings
• Reflect on classroom practice from an external perspective
• Share new ideas about teaching and learning with colleagues
• Enhanced employability through experience of teaching in diverse settings
• Recognise the role of professionals from other sectors
• Provide challenge and the opportunity to take acceptable levels of risk
• Reduce behaviour problems and improve attendance
• Deepen understanding of the concepts that span traditional subject boundaries and which are frequently difficult to teach effectively using classroom methods alone
• Better understand the mutual benefits of establishing a community of learners
• Deepen and challenge the understanding of learning and its complexity
• Positive impact on the teacher-pupil relationship
• Transfer learning experienced outside the school to the classroom and vice versa
• Maximise potential for learning by using a powerful combination of physical, visual and naturalistic ways of learning, as well as our linguistic and mathematical intelligence

Benefits for pupils

• More effective, creative and inspiring visits outside school
• Learn in real situations to raise achievement across a range of subjects and develop better personal and social skills
• Opportunity to satisfy curiosity and to explore the world
• Experience learning in a diverse range of settings and environments to develop general and subject based knowledge, thinking and problem solving skills and life skills such as cooperation and interpersonal communication
• Access opportunities to engage in creative activity
• Improve attitudes to learning
• Develop active citizens engaged with their environment Experience memorable learning experiences that stay with you into adulthood and affect behaviour, lifestyle and work
• Learn to engage critically with ideas, take intellectual risks and develop constructive arguments
• Access learning opportunities created to support pupils’ needs, interests, learning styles and abilities

Benefits for partner schools

Where placements are integrated with a trainees’ teaching practice in a school, the school can benefit from:

• new teachers who are flexible and knowledgeable about the benefits of learning in other settings, and of working with partners
• new teachers with creative approaches to teaching and learning
• the development of sustainable partnerships that enhance the curriculum
• more effective, creative school visits