To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with reference to the answer of 27 October 2008, Official Report, column 706W, on outdoor education: safety, for what reason his Department's revised guidance on health and safety of pupils on educational visits was not published in the first quarter of 2009; and when he plans to publish the revised guidance. (279408)

The Out and About website for Learning Outside the Classroom, which went live in autumn 2008, includes brief guidelines on the safety of learners on activities outside the classroom.

A more detailed toolkit for local authorities, including model forms, will supplement this later this year, completing the Department's revision of the operational aspects of the guidance we published in 1998 and 2002.

We will consult shortly on a high level document, provisionally entitled “Health and Safety of Learners Outside the Classroom”, which will underpin the material on the Learning Outside the Classroom website at:

http://www.lotc.org.uk/

We had hoped to start consultation on this document earlier this year, but put this back to allow more time to ensure coherence between it and the toolkit.