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Cheshire’s provision for outdoor and residential education is first rate. The four residential centres are sufficient to ensure that every pupil / student in the County is likely to have at least one opportunity (and often several) to take part in a visit. The centres between them offer space, time and support to enrich learning across and beyond the formal school curriculum, as well as providing a focus for environmental education, visual and performing arts, field studies and adventurous activities. The service also offers the large but immeasurable benefits of personal and social development for young people to live together in a different environment; schools, and the centres themselves, make the most of this potential through planned and reflective activities on courses. The centres are in great demand and are invariably booked well ahead, predominantly by Cheshire schools.
There are Outdoor Education Centres at Delamere Forest, Beeston, Burwardsley and Tattenhall. These are, without exception, set in extremely beautiful, natural surroundings and provide for residential and day visits by students and teachers. Each centre, through a wide range of courses and activities, offers distinctive opportunities to explore and study parts of Cheshire, which are rich in heritage sites and unique local interest. All the centres offer self-contained residential facilities.
Cheshire also has a unique residential provision on Anglesey, by a lease agreement with the National Trust. The Canolfan Conway Centre, set in idyllic surroundings in the extensive grounds of Plas Newydd on Anglesey, caters for a wide range of short-term residential courses and can accommodate several groups of up to 400 students in total. There is a private dock and shoreline on the Menai Strait, with quick and easy access by road to Snowdonia. It offers as wide a range of opportunities as any educational centre in the country, with extensive outdoor and indoor facilities and is the largest centre of its kind in the UK.
These centres were created in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are a significant, distinctive feature of education in Cheshire and are as important now to our young people as they were 30 years ago.
Contacts:
Beeston Outdoor Education Centre,
Beeston, Tarporley, CW6 9TR
Tel: 01829 260535
Burwardsley Outdoor Education Centre,
Tattenhall, Chester, CH3 9PA
Tel & Fax: 01829 770223
Canolfan Conwy,
Plas Newydd, Llanfair PG, Anglesey, Gwynedd, LL61 6DJ
Tel: 01248 714501 Fax: 01248 714504
Delamere Forest Outdoor Education Centre,
Foxhowl, Ashton Road, Norley, WA6 6PA
Tel: 01928 740393
Tattenhall Centre,
Tattenhall, Chester, CH3 9PX
Tel: 01829 770223 Fax: 01829 771117
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