An organisation which ran activity holidays for thousands of children and trained sixth-formers and young teachers in leadership skills is to be revived this summer.
Active Training and Education is being launched by Chris Green, the teacher who founded Colony Holidays more than 30 years ago. The new organisation aims to provide useful and stimulating in-service training days for teachers as well as subject-based and general activity holidays for eight to 14-year-olds.
Colony Holidays, which was inspired by a similar French scheme, provided educational breaks for around 80,000 pupils up to the 1980s. According to Mr Green, many of the young people who trained to be Colony monitors - volunteers who worked with children in the holidays - went on to run whole schemes and now describe it as the most useful management and learning experience of their working lives.
Although the organisation will not attain educational trust status until this summer, groups of mainly sixth-formers have already been trained as monitors for the Superweeks which will be run during the school holidays. Young teachers have also been trained. “Some have said four or five days with our children is better than three years in college,” said Mr Green.
ATE can be contacted at 11 Manby Road, Malvern, Worcestershire WR14 3BD
