Alistair Cole Consulting provides high-quality professional advice, guidance and support to schools and educational establishments in the effective management of educational visits. We also support schools in developing outdoor education and learning as a valuable tool for learning, personal development and curriculum enrichment.
Our team comprises highly experienced outdoor education professionals who can provide practical and professional advice across all aspects of educational visit management, including adventurous and higher-risk activities, residential visits, and the development of curriculum-linked outdoor learning within the school environment.
Basic Advice and Consultancy
- A flexible consultancy service providing professional advice and guidance as and when required.
- ‘As and when’ advice and paperwork review.
- £1,000 annual retainer fee.
- Then
£90 per half hour for advice and consultancy.
Educational Visits Management and Approval
A comprehensive educational visits support service designed to provide schools with ongoing professional oversight, template documents, medical advice, 24/7 emergency support and senior management support.
- Full overview of the school’s online educational visits approval and monitoring system, such as EVOLVE.
- Outdoor Education Adviser approval of residential and adventurous activity visits.
- Sample monitoring of non-adventurous day visits.
- Telephone, written advice and guidance as required.
- Ongoing professional support in relation to educational visits and outdoor learning and more!
Please visit our
Retained Safety Support page for further information and tariffs.
Our aim is to provide schools with practical, proportionate and professional support, helping them to manage educational visits effectively while enabling pupils to benefit from high-quality outdoor learning and educational experiences.
Alistair is a highly regarded expert in outdoor education, expedition leadership, health and safety, and adventure activities, with more than 30 years’ experience working across the sector as an outdoor instructor, expedition director, outdoor centre director and outdoor education adviser.
A qualified Mountain Leader, Alistair has led more than 40 international expeditions and has extensive experience operating in challenging and remote environments. He holds a wide range of health and safety qualifications, including a degree in Occupational Health, the NEBOSH National General Certificate and TechIOSH status. He is also an instructor in Off-Site Safety Management and an experienced remote trauma medic.
Throughout his career, Alistair has worked extensively with schools, youth groups and other organisations, helping them develop best practice in outdoor learning, adventurous activities, and the planning and management of educational visits and experiences.
He has supported and encouraged schools and groups to develop a wide range of adventure activities, including climbing, paddle sports and Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expeditions. His particular passion, however, lies in helping schools make outdoor learning a meaningful and regular part of everyday teaching, learning and the wider curriculum.
Alistair is particularly skilled at helping schools recognise and make the most of the opportunities on their doorstep. By using school grounds and local environments, he empowers teachers to make outdoor learning accessible to all pupils and integrate it naturally into the school day and wider school life.
His expertise extends beyond education into expedition medicine, international travel and media production. Alistair has advised on a number of major overseas television programmes, including SAS: Are You Tough Enough? and the ground-breaking Human Planet series. For Human Planet, he served as the Health and Safety adviser, overseeing pre-departure planning, crew training and travel health advice to help ensure the safety and wellbeing of production teams working in challenging environments.
Alistair is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Linnean Society and Fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism. He is also a member of the
Association of Advisers for Offsite Learning & Educational Visits and the European Resuscitation Council and has lectured at the Royal Geographical Society and for National Geographic. He has guest lectured at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and served on the Expedition Medicine Working Group at the Royal College of Surgeons.
For more than two decades, Alistair was Chief Instructor of Faculty for the Expedition Care Programme and is the former Chairman of the
Expedition Providers Association (EPA), reflecting his longstanding contribution to professional standards within the expedition and outdoor sector.
With an exceptionally broad depth of practical and professional experience, Alistair brings together outdoor education, adventure, expedition management, health and safety, and remote medicine. He is passionate about sharing this knowledge and supporting organisations to develop confident, safe and inspiring outdoor experiences that bring learning to life
