It’s the 31st of December, fireworks are going off outside, and The Outdoors People are celebrating another year of wonderful school camps! We cannot thank our schools enough for their ongoing support and are extremely proud to say that our feedback from you all is once again overwhelmingly positive.

A note!

The last three years have been incredibly challenging for all and the education sector has been under tremendous pressure. While we always offer all of our schools and customers the chance to provide feedback on their experience, very few schools had the time to complete extra paperwork in 2021. As a result, we chose to combine our feedback from 2021 with this years responses. Doing so doesn’t change the picture for either year but does give a better overall view of how things have been going. As always, we have included links to the raw data at the end of this post.

The Headline Numbers

In 2021, The Outdoors People worked with 3204 children at 57 schools. This was a 117% increase on 2019!
In 2022, we worked with 3181 children at 56 different schools.
All of our schools are given an opportunity to complete a post-camp feedback form and 16 of them chose to do so.
100% of schools who provided feedback said they would book a camp with us again.
80% of this years schools have already booked their next camp.
All of our schools rated their overall camping experience as “excellent” (5 out of 5).
Taken across all categories, our average score was 4.97 out of 5.
Of the eight schools who completed a feedback form and had camped with us before, four thought their camp was as good as in previous years, and four thought that we were better than in previous years.
91% of our schools rebook on average.

Key Criticisms

With such outstanding feedback from our schools, it can be difficult to identify areas we can improve!

We are looking into further catering options we can offer schools.
We are further improving our ability to accommodate dietary allergies on our campfire cooking sessions.
We have added additional elements to some of our most well established sessions.
We are designing new activity options for schools to choose from.

A Selection of your GLOWING Comments

“Constant smiling faces.”

“Thank you to you all for making our camp such a memorable experience. As you know, our camp is aimed at our most disadvantaged children across our academy trust, and we feel that your activities really allow the children to experience something wider than they would in the classroom setting.”

“Even in such a short space of time, it is wonderful to see the children develop and shine in ways that we do not get to see on a day to day basis, and return home to their families with stories to tell and new memories made."

“We simply wanted the children to have fun and socialise together after a truly horrendous 18 months, but they got so much more out of it too!”

“Another truly awesome camp! This experience enabled each and every child to have an amazing experience that allowed them to grow as a person and allowed teachers to have a warm glow watching the children developing a sense of team spirit and overcoming their own fears and anxieties! Can't wait to do it again!”

“This was a first for us but by no means a last! The other children are already asking about their turn and it's made some fantastic memories for some very happy children and parents.”

“Your Camp Director made the camp! He quickly built up a fantastic rapport with the children. The children trusted him and he was clear in his expectations and still made the activities fun. Great communication at all times with the school staff.”

“Fun. Unique. Memorable!”

The Numbers In Detail

Administration and Booking: 5 out of 5
Camping Experience: 4.9 out of 5
Activities: 4.9 out of 5
Instructors: 5 out of 5
Meeting Your Learning Outcomes: 5 out of 5
Overall Experience: 5 out of 5

Finances

Early in 2020, we made the choice to become a non-profit and are proud to say that we completed that transition in 2021. All surplus generated by The Outdoors People is now reinvested in the company to the benefit of our schools and hardworking staff.

2020 was extremely challenging for the adventure education sector and we have been very sad to see many of our friends at other companies permanently cease trading. The Outdoors People worked hard to be in a strong position when restrictions on outdoor activities were relaxed and circumstances worked in our favour when we started running camps again in 2021. As a result, we showed incredible record growth of 117% when compared to 2019.

We were able to consolidate that growth over 2022 and have already confirmed a further 25% increase in bookings for 2023.

Over the last three years one of our highest priorities has been taking care of our outstanding staff team. We have continued to offer sick pay to freelance staff throughout the pandemic and have done our best to cushion the cost of living crisis with above inflation pay-rises in 2022 and 2023. We have also significantly increased our number of permanent staff to allow us to maintain a high quality offering for our schools.

Raw Data

A spreadsheet of all feedback – with identifying information removed – can be downloaded here.

In Summary

The pandemic was phenomenally challenging for everyone and school staff across the UK have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the wellbeing of their students. We were incredibly proud to contribute to the health and education of so many children at such an important time.

The feedback we have received from our schools over the last two years has been outstandingly positive and we cannot thank our amazing instructors enough for their knowledge, skill and hard work.

In just a few hours, we’ll be raising a glass to the New Year and we’re very much looking forward to seeing all of our wonderful friends at so many schools in just a few months.

– Thank you

Craig Geddes

Company Director

Kaddi.com

Another amazing year is behind us!