Children denied chance to develop 'resilience and grit' by too strict health and safety rules, warns Ofsted chief - from The Telegraph -

Ms Spielman, who took over as chief inspector in March, said children must stop being forced to wear hi-vis jackets on school trips “like troupes of mini-construction workers minus the hard hats”.

The BBC  - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40841437

Ms Spielman said making pupils wear high-vis vests on trips made them look like mini-builders minus the hard hats.

She said schools had developed an over-cautious culture that made it difficult for young people to cope with everyday events.

Ms Spielman said every minute enforcing a ban on conkers and yo-yos was a minute away from tackling a multitude of real dangers.

"I want Ofsted to make sure that schools are properly focused on pupil safety but that it doesn't come at the expense of opportunities to broaden and enrich young minds," she said.

"My message to schools is this - keeping children safe from harm should always be your overriding concern but in doing so make sure you distinguish between real and imagined risk.

"Trying to insulate your pupils from every bump, germ or bruise won't just drive you to distraction, it will short-change those pupils as well, limiting their opportunity to fully take advantage of the freedom of childhood and to explore the world around them."

More from Campaign for Adventure previous articles...http://www.campaignforadventure.org/news/campaign-for-adventure/

Thank you all

who gave us feedback - thanks for what we have done, thoughts on what we might do and advice on what we need to be doing. This has informed the next phase of our progression.

You like our public promotion of adventure, our challenge of the over-safe and our continuing push-back of legislation. The events we run - the Outdoor Adventure Weeks, the Outdoor Champions Award and the Press and Publicity Training are all well appreciated and you want more of these. Work in the more intense arenas such as Westminster, Insurance and Industry/HSE leaves you cold, but is appreciated as important. When we ran conferences - 'A Question of Balance', 'Why Adventure?' and so on, you thought these were really valuable and you are not happy that we stopped.

Our future you see in more of the same , with at least a single large conference, more articles, more publicity and some further links to outdoor adventure magazines.

OK - so an ask from us.  Anyone offering to help? We will continue delivering and we shall up those areas you have asked for, We shall particularly push for a high-level conference, probably in collaboration and certainly UK.

A very big thank you to all, again.

Ian Lewis

Campaign Director