Education booking made simpler with English Heritage

Organising school trips has become even easier thanks to a new booking system from English Heritage, which enables teachers to research, plan and book their visits to some of English Heritage’s 400 historic properties around the country.

Teachers planning visits now have a centralised number – 0870 333 0606 - with a dedicated education visit customer service team, which has information about the facilities, curriculum links and availability at all of English Heritage’s properties around the country.

“In the past, booking were taken by our regional education teams, but as they spend a lot of time working directly in schools, they were not always at their desks to take calls. The new centralised booking system will ensure that people get directly through to a specialist education visit co-ordinator, who can provide all the details about the booking in one simple phone call,” comments English Heritage’s head of education and interpretation, Sandra Stancliffe.

Education bookings team members have information about every site at their fingertips to facilitate the visit, including:

• Opening times and essential visit information for over 400 free-entry sites, like the availability of coach parking, toilets and disabled accessibility
• Where Discovery Visits – dedicated tours with a member of the English Heritage team or an expert interpreter – are available
• Education resources available for teachers, including background information, ways of using the visit to cover different parts of the curriculum and activity ideas.

“You can chat through your visit with an educational visit specialist, make your booking and then receive your visit permits and other essential information for your visit by email within minutes – a great way of easing time pressures for teachers to make school tips so much easier,” adds Sandra. “Best of all, educational visits are free for everyone from schools and scout groups to WEA (Workers’ Educational Association) students – there really is no reason to miss out on these amazing sites as part of any curriculum.”

The education booking line operates Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 5.00pm. Teachers wishing to book visits outside these hours can additionally book online (http://services.english-heritage.org.uk/educationbookings) or leave a message to be called back by a member of the team at a convenient time.

For more details, please call 0870 333 0606.

ENDS

For further media information, please contact:

Jay Commins – PRO English Heritage (Education)

Tel: 0113 251 5698

Mob: 07810 546567

Email: jay@fim.org.uk