2024-25 EVOLVE Advice Snapshot
A new year of educational visits has begun and the whole EVOLVE Advice team is ready to support you with expert advice, quality-assured training and responsive support.
Over the last year we’ve introduced new resources, opportunities and ways of working all designed to support the incredible work you to do give children and young people such important experiences on educational visits.
We’ve got big plans for you this year, but before we reveal those, let’s take a look at new developments over the last year.
Your advice and support service - a snapshot of 2024-25
Across all our services our goal is to support our schools to confidently deliver safe and memorable educational visits. We’re committed to providing:
Fast, in context, competent advice on all aspects of educational visits.
High-quality training to equip you with the skills and knowledge you need.
Useful resources developed for, and with, EVCs to help you day-to-day.
Find out more about what was new over the last year:
(If you’re impatient to know what’s coming next, you can jump straight to 2025-26 here)
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We’re growing with you
Over this year we’ve invested in new team members to support our growing schools community – we now support over 4,500 schools and settings across the UK and overseas. We’re determined that our existing clients continue to receive the same high-quality advice, training and support you’ve come to expect from EVOLVE Advice.
In 2024-25 we were joined by two new advisers (H and Martin), three new support team specialists (Alexandra, Laura and Emma), Kate - our Client Relationship Lead, and created a new role – Director of Learning and Development to oversee our training excellence.
We’re also proud to announce that three of our advisers, Angela, Emma and H have all achieved their IOSH Level 3 Health and Safety qualifications, becoming Technical Members of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.
We welcomed new members to our Educational Visits Advisory Panel, bringing further specialisms and experience in allergy management, outdoor education and adventurous activities.
Raising the bar in training for safer visits
In addition to our core EVC and Visit Leader courses, we introduced new opportunities to upskill your wider team, including leadership:
E-learning for senior leaders – e-learning courses focusing on the specific responsibilities of senior leaders and governors when overseeing and approving educational visits.
EVC development options including coaching to support those new to the role, and revalidation training for experienced EVCs.
Visit leader e-learning – updated, self-directed e-learning for staff leading trips and visits.
First aid for educational visits - including advice on managing first aid situations in outdoor and off-site environments.
Monthly EVOLVE systems training with tech support.
A series of webinars themed on the STAGED approach to risk management.
In February, we ran a face-to-face CPD day for EVCs including additional risk management and critical incident training.
In July we took a group of EVCs to Normandy for an immersive training weekend with ‘real life’ visit scenarios.
Plus, we invited providers to an ‘Educational Visits 101’ training day to refresh their teams on the latest guidance and requirements on schools so they’re better prepared to support you.
Keeping standards high
EVOLVE Advice achieved ‘approved training provider’ status from the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH). Our EVC Training is IOSH approved and we also introduced the option for EVCs to gain IOSH Approved EVC status through an optional assessment.
We pride ourselves on raising and maintaining standards in educational visits training. Feedback from our learners in 2024-25 showed that 99% of over 2,000 learners would recommend our training.
Choice and responsiveness
Whether you want to talk, or simply search, we have an option for you.
In December, we made eva! Educational Visits Assistant available to EVOLVE Advice clients. This AI assistant helps staff search relevant guidance quickly and easily, at any time of day – it’s accessed via your EVOLVE site.
A new telephone system and response standards mean you’ll always get through to us (we’re keeping our ‘no out-of-office promise’) and helped speed up support from calls or online live chat with our team.
We’re still available on email and continued to challenge ourselves on responsiveness – our average response time in 2025 was 4hrs for advice and under 3 hours for EVOLVE support – getting you the help you need when you need it.
More Tools for Schools for your teams
We’ve added more checklists to the free resources you can access from our website including on identifying on choosing a provider.
A new Funding Finder resource on our website helps you find grants and other funding opportunities with advice on making the case for funding your visits.
We relaunched the Educational Visits Community with a series of generous offers and discounts from providers, exclusively for EVOLVE Advice clients – access the community via EVOLVE.
We funded 20 CLOtC Memberships for schools and gave away 12 x £500 in Get Out! Grants as part of our giving back commitment.
What’s coming next?
We’ve got more exciting things in store for you, here’s what’s coming soon…
Don’t miss the National Educational Visits Conference on 11 June 2026 in London – special rates for EVOLVE Advice clients.
New training for Designated Allergy Leads – including managing allergies on educational visits (from September).
A series of free webinars led by EVOLVE Advice advisers and guests, plus 20 minute focus sessions for Heads and EVCs on key challenges in educational visits (starting this week).
CPD Day combining EVC training, allergy training, critical incident and risk management. (February).
More toolkits and resources to support educational visits progression and planning.
Wondering how to stay updated whenever we introduce new resources or services?
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