Leave Outdoor Education on the Senior School General Subject List
Outdoor Education Encourages Higher-Order Thinking: Many adults will remember a key childhood outdoor experience, and the thrill, sense of achievement, and insights they derived from it. These memories linger longer and more strongly than the specifics of calculus or a Shakespearian sonnet. And that is where Outdoor Education's strength lies - in the powerful combination of immersive learning and robust academic theory. Students can draw links between theory and their own lived experiences, often in real-time. What's more, the knowledge and competencies they gain from their Outdoor Education experiences are often directly applicable to other aspects of their lives.
Outdoor Education helps young people to build foundational cognitive skills such as resilience, perseverance, adaptive thinking, complex reasoning, collaboration, and leadership. These skills are harder to gain from more traditional subjects and classroom settings. They are, however, essential to long-term success, as well as directly transferable to other situations, such as tertiary education, employment, relationships, and civil life.
Outdoor Education is the very embodiment of active, experiential learning. There is a well-established body of research showing that active learning is significantly more effective than passive methodologies. Time and again, studies show that learning which incorporates discussion, collaboration, problem-solving and higher-order thinking improves knowledge retention, student motivation and performance. Objectively, active learning also improves test scores.
Outdoor Education Improves Other Areas of Learning: Outdoor Education can boost students' learning in other areas of the curriculum. Recent studies have shown that exposure to greenery, even outside a classroom window, increases achievement in mathematics and reading. Being taught in the outdoors improves learning in science, reading, writing, social studies, and mathematics. Being active in a natural environment compared to a built-up one improves children’s subsequent cognitive performance and attention. And while fewer studies focus specifically on Outdoor Education courses, those that do also show gains.
Outdoor Education’s Impacts Are Enduring: The impacts of Outdoor Education are long-lasting. Research shows that in both the short and long terms, Outdoor Education participation positively impacts adolescent development. Impacted domains are as varied as emotional control, self-confidence, social competence, task leadership, and time management. Studies have found that the benefits gained from outdoor education persist, including a 2024 New Zealand study that found that participants of one long-duration Outdoor Education programme continued to use strategies learnt during the programme up to eleven years later.
Outdoor Education Fulfils Key Developmental Needs: Outdoor Education is one of a limited number of subjects where young people develop critical thinking skills in a real-world environment where decisions actually matter. As noted in the 2025 Australasian Society of Developmental Paediatrics position statement on risky play, “Activities that involve challenge, exploration, and uncertainty are fundamental to children’s growth, health, and well-being.” Contemporary research overwhelmingly supports “reintroducing elements of challenge and risk [to play]...” Policy implications include the need to “balance safety and growth [by] manag[ing] hazards thoughtfully, allowing children to experience manageable risks that promote learning.”
Learning how to take risks safely is one of the key developmental tasks of adolescence. There is strong evidence that supported risk-taking in adolescence significantly reduces impulsive or dangerous risk-taking behaviours, including those associated with an increased likelihood of long-term harm or death. Young people get good at what they practise, and that includes assessing risk. It is important that New Zealand schools continue to provide students with safe, pro-social opportunities to do so, and Outdoor Education is an ideal setting for this to occur.
Outdoor Education Fosters Inclusion: Outdoor Education honours different ways of learning. Experiential, kinaesthetic learning improves knowledge retention among neuro-diverse students and others who learn differently. It provides these students with important experiences of learning success. Outdoor Education incorporates concepts of mātauranga Māori and kaitiakitanga, and provides relevant, culturally affirming educational experiences for Māori and Pacific students. Outdoor Education fosters students' relationships with our environment. Without it, fewer young people will connect with and care about our whenua, and the wild places that define us as a nation.
Many who take Outdoor Education do not come from privileged backgrounds. Their families may not have the time, money, equipment, or skills to provide equivalent experiences after school or on weekends. Those who come from urban backgrounds may not have ready access to suitable environments. Continuing to provide senior school Outdoor Education ensures these opportunities remain available for all.
Outdoor Education Improves Engagement: Outdoor Education helps ambivalent learners remain engaged in school. Preliminary research shows that participating in alternative subjects, including Outdoor Education, can improve attendance for vulnerable students such as those with social and emotional difficulties. For these students, subjects such as Outdoor Education can be the difference between attending school or not. Attendance is the best indicator of engagement and is unequivocally linked to overall success. Students perform better and succeed more when they turn up, and offering Outdoor Education is one way of supporting them to do so. At a time when chronic truancy rates among senior students are around 15%, we need subjects like Outdoor Education more than ever.
Outdoor Education Represents International Best Practice: Countries against which we benchmark ourselves encourage outdoor education. The Finnish National Core Curriculum mandates outdoor education across all age groups to encourage experiential learning connected to the real world. Singapore has offered outdoor education as a distinct entity since 2013, as well as mandated it as part of the physical education curriculum up to pre-university level since 2014. Norway offers outdoor and environmental education both as a distinct entity and as a component of other subjects across all age levels. We have offered outdoor education as a stand-alone subject since the 1990s; we should continue to stand with other high-achieving countries that do.
Outdoor Education Supports Healthy Habit Formation: Forming healthy habits during adolescence is critical. It is one of the times in life when our brains are most malleable. The patterns of behaviour we establish during these years usually become ingrained for life, significantly impacting future health and well-being. Fostering healthy habits, like time spent outside, exercise, and effective stress management, lays a strong foundation for physical and mental resilience. As health professionals, we see the benefits of healthy habit formation as well as the consequences of not doing so. We should be doing all that we can to support our youth to establish good habits, and one of the best ways of doing so is through Outdoor Education.
Outdoor Education Improves Physical and Mental Health: Being outside is good for us. Studies consistently show that exposure to nature improves physical and mental health. The benefits are myriad and well-established, including reduced rates of anxiety, depression, obesity, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and deranged lipids, amongst other outcomes. Youth mental health is deteriorating worldwide, including in New Zealand, and this deterioration is accelerating. In New Zealand, up to one in five youth aged 15-24 is affected by significant psychological distress. We have the highest youth suicide rate in the OECD. Our youth obesity and diabetes rates are skyrocketing. We see the impacts of limited outdoor activity on our young people every single day. We should be encouraging more students to take Outdoor Education, not fewer.
Outdoor Education Should Not Be Limited to Vocational Students: Most who participate in Outdoor Education do not plan a career in the industry. Only a lucky few go on to study the subject at a tertiary level. The majority of students move into other pathways, either vocational or advanced academic study. Some become our skilled crafts and tradespeople. Some are our doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business people to be. Some are our future leaders. Regardless of their direction, every student takes their Outdoor Education learnings and relationships with them. Keeping Outdoor Education on the Senior School General Subject List will ensure that these formative experiences remain accessible to all students.
Outdoor Education Must Stay: Please retain Outdoor Education on the senior school subject curriculum list. Please support the development of the Outdoor Education curriculum and provide the resources to deliver it. Please support the teachers who teach it. Outdoor Education helps our youth flourish and benefits our society immeasurably. In these uncertain times, our youth need it now more than ever.
