Ellesmere College students get a river-crossing pep-talk from their instructor. Photo: Georgia Merton
Changes to the secondary school curriculum would likely mean outdoor education becomes a vocational path, but feedback from across industries suggests the ministry can't see the woods for the trees.
A petition to keep outdoor education as part of the secondary school curriculum has amassed more than 40,000 signatures.
Last month, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced an overhaul of the secondary education curriculum, phasing out NCEA and replacing it with five core subjects.
The Ministry of Education has indicated outdoor education won't be one of them, prompting Education Outdoors NZ (EONZ) to launch a petition that will be delivered to Minister Stanford.
EONZ chief executive Fiona McDonald says the response has been overwhelming, with people from a wide range of industries backing the petition.
"Doctors, principals, engineers... we've had CEs of large international companies that are crediting outdoor ed with their success," she says.
In Saturday's episode, McDonald tells The Detail about the range of skills students can learn through outdoor education and what impact losing it as a core subject would have, not only on schools here, but on our international reputation for attracting exchange students.
Outdoor education currently operates under NCEA, with students able to gain university entrance by taking the subject, but as part of the overhaul of secondary education, it could move to the vocational pathway.
Albany Senior High School principal Claire Amos says classifying subjects as vocational has consequences.
"For one, they actually lose their funding and resourcing... and they will be handed over to industry to develop and support the creation of the resources," she says.
"It's privatisation by stealth. It's turning our education system into something that is delivered by private companies."
Currently schools work with a company called Toi Mai to develop outdoor education curriculum, but Amos says that company will be disestablished, leaving schools, students and educators in the dark over what comes next.
Amos says it's not a matter of deciding which subject is more important, but recognising that they all complement each other, and to classify any subject as purely academic or purely vocational is problematic.
"We know that the sciences are supported by the arts, that physical wellbeing and problem-solving and leadership skill-building actually supports people in business and industry," she says.
Emergency department nurse Rob MacLean spent two decades of his career working in the outdoor education sector, including a stint as Outward Bound director. Before that, he also studied environmental science, spending time in Antarctica and Alaska, and has also worked in community engagement and risk management advisory.
He credits his high school outdoor education programme as having "an influence on every single career change".
"Some of those formative experiences in the outdoors has had direct linkages to every one of those careers," he says.
MacLean says, in some ways, the proposed plan to move outdoor ed into the vocational pathway makes sense, as it can set people up for specific careers, but worries that the move would mean more focus on practice and less on theory.
"You can focus on tying knots, you can focus on cramponing techniques, but the theory behind it is also profound and even more powerful," he says.
MacLean gives an example of how the doctors he works with in ED use critical thinking skills to avoid "risk traps".
"A lot of the models they're using to make sure... they're not making mistakes with their thinking around clinical cases actually come out of the aviation sector, but the people that took them out of the aviation sector and made them more accessible were avalanche forecasters."
MacLean says this example shows how transferable the skills learnt through outdoor education are.
He says, if the goal is to create a future generation that can drive an economy that's strong and vibrant, outdoor education must be part of the main school curriculum.
"Two of the biggest things that we trade on as a nation are both our natural environment and our human capital, and to step away from a topic that provides such a holistic level of training in those two areas is a strategic backstep."
Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here.
You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
