16,000 people have signed a petition calling on North Yorkshire County Council not to close it's outdoor education centres at East Barnby, near Whitby and Bewerley Park.
The council said last week it was considering mothballing the centres which are suffering financial and maintenance issues.
North Yorkshire County Council’s executive yesterday approved an in-depth review of the centres, after hearing glowing accounts from teachers about the huge beneficial impact school residential visits had on tens of thousands of children.
Teacher Ian Bloor, of Eskdale School in Whitby, described the centres where children take part in adventurous activities such as archery and abseiling, as the “jewel in the crown of the North Yorkshire education service”.
He told the meeting the centres offered many children activities that they would normally not have the chance or financial means to experience and teachers often saw a child develop more in a week’s visit to the centres than in a whole school year.
The meeting heard how the centres, which had been forced to close their doors since last March, faced huge uncertainty as it remained unclear when their biggest income generator, school visits, would resume.
Councillors were told the centres had run at a small loss in recent years and after the Government’s emergency Covid funding ended in the coming months the authority was forecasting a £1.6m loss for the coming year unless action was taken.
The authority’s executive member for education Councillor Patrick Mulligan said the council would examine a range of options for the service and its benefits, with a view to enabling it to generate more money and invest in the buildings, some of which date from the Second World War.
He said the review, set to conclude in the summer, would seek to balance staffing and buildings costs to give the centres a long-term future.
Cllr Mulligan said some people had mistakenly taken the officers’ recommendation to mothball the centres as the first step towards closure.
The executive unanimously agreed to increase protection for the centres and start moves to reduce staff levels, including through redeployment, retaining sufficient expertise in the area but cutting the financial burden on the service.
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