A  reminder to all our establishments that the new guidance and Scottish Framework for Safe Practice in Off-Site Visits is available and was published in March 2013.

This framework produced by a range of partners i.e.  the Scottish Government, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) , the Scottish Advisory Panel for Outdoor Education (SAPOE), Education Scotland and the Association of Directors of Education. This framework updates the previous Health and Safety on Educational Excursions (HASEE) guidance.

It provides a range of advice on safe practice and

“adopts a  low bureaucracy, enabling approach to outdoor experience and off-site visits”

It can be used to plan and support visits alongside the current Midlothian Guidelines for off-site visits. we will be updating our guidelines and EV1 forms soon to reflect some of the changes and all heads of establishments/those responsible for off-site visits will be contacted with further updates shortly.

We also hope to have new of an exiting new development on the use of EVOLVE (Educational Visit On-line visit and activity planning, processing, monitoring and reporting tool for LAs, schools and academies). As well as providing establishments with a planning tool aligned to current guidelines this will also allow us to adopt a faster turn-around of approval forms and update our current process for approving off-site visits.

The current system for Midlothian can be found here.