Progressive Resumption of Height-Based Activities for School Programmes from February 2023

1. The Ministry of Education (MOE) will progressively resume height-based outdoor adventure learning (OAL) activities from 1 February 2023, with enhanced safety measures in place. These activities, which have been suspended since February 2021, offer important educational benefits by allowing students to step outside their comfort zone, develop positive attributes such as self-confidence, teamwork, and resilience, and strengthen trust and relationships with peers and teachers.

Enhanced Safety Measures

2. MOE has completed an internal review to enhance the safe delivery of height-based OAL activities. We have also worked with the Ministry of Community, Culture and Youth, the National Youth Council and industry partners to review and strengthen overall quality and safety standards in the outdoor adventure education sector.

3. The resumption of height-based OAL activities in February 2023 will be guided by the following set of enhanced safety measures:

1. Accreditation of operators: All operators offering height-based activities for MOE students must ensure their facilities are accredited regularly by a National Sports Association or a regional outdoor adventure learning professional body, to ensure that their facilities meet safety standards for operation and training. Schools must only engage accredited operators and qualified instructors to conduct height-based OAL activities for their students. Refer to Annex for more details on accreditation and qualification requirements for height-based activities.
2. Progressive resumption: Accredited operators running challenge course activities – which include zipline, high rope and obstacle courses that require belaying – will resume at a reduced tempo of 50% or less of their normal operational capacity from 1 February to 31 March 2023. This will give operators time to progressively scale-up their operations after the two-year hiatus, and allow challenge course instructors to ease into their roles and responsibilities in a paced-out manner. To ensure instructors remain operationally ready, MOE has been conducting refresher sessions and recertification courses to help instructors keep their certifications current. MOE will conduct skills verification sessions in January 2023 to ascertain that instructors can resume challenge course activities confidently and safely.
   
   Abseiling and climbing activities will resume in full from 1 February 2023, given that commercial operators and instructors for these activities have remained operational at commercial sites for the public.
3. Appointment of OAL Activity Leaders: All MOE schools have appointed a staff as activity leader in charge of OAL since early 2022 to oversee the safe and quality delivery of OAL activities for their students. Before taking on the appointment, OAL Activity Leaders were given training to take on this role.

OAL Safety a Priority

4. The Outdoor Adventure Education Council, which was formed in September 2022 to spearhead the development of Singapore's outdoor adventure education sector, will continue its work on developing national standards to govern the operations and safety of height-based activities across the outdoor education sector. MOE will adopt these national standards once they are available. In the meantime, the Council has reviewed MOE's enhanced safety measures and supported the resumption of height-based OAL activities for schools.