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Written to the curriculum
Authored by a serving primary teacher against Curriculum for Excellence, including a First Level castles project and Second Level topics on Mary, the Jacobites and the Victorians.
School trips · £3 per pupil
Take your learning outdoors and into old Edinburgh
I’ve been in an Edinburgh primary classroom for over twenty years, so I know what a class of thirty can actually do on a wet Tuesday. I plan the day around that.
- £3 per pupil
- Accompanying adults free
- 10am or 2pm starts
How it works
Pupils handle the evidence. They are not talked at.
Every tour is an activity, not a lecture with thirty children trailing behind. Pupils work in pairs, analyse and evaluate real historical sources, and reach their own conclusions before we tell them the answer.
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Paired evidence work
Laminated cards, archive images, maps and records go straight into pupils’ hands. They analyse, argue and decide. It is the same skill work you would set indoors, done in the place it happened.
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Priced for a school budget
£3 per pupil. Accompanying adults come free. The only extra is a castle booking fee if your tour uses one, or 50p a head where a tour goes into Greyfriars Kirkyard.
The five tours
Pick the one that matches your topic.
First Level
The Castles project
What actually makes a castle a castle and not just a big house. Pupils use laminated cards to work out how they would attack it, and how they would defend it. Best run at Craigmillar Castle.
Old Edinburgh activity tour
An evidence-hunting journey through Greyfriars Kirkyard, the Grassmarket, the West Bow, the Royal Mile and an Old Town close. Pupils work in pairs the whole way round.
Mary, Queen of Scots
Back to the Edinburgh Mary knew: the sites of her childhood, and Kirk o’Field, where her second husband was assassinated. Pupils piece her story together from the sources.
Bonnie Prince Charlie & the Jacobites
The places that mattered in the final Jacobite rising. What Edinburgh was like in 1745, how the Jacobite army took the city, and how the people inside it behaved once it had.
Slum life in Victorian Edinburgh
The other side of the Victorians. The Old Town was effectively a slum, and this tour takes a class into the heart of it to unravel the forgotten stories of people who struggled to survive. Strong links to inequality and citizenship.
For the person organising it
You have enough forms to fill in.
Robert has taken classes out of an Edinburgh school for two decades. He knows what your head teacher will ask for and what your risk assessment needs to say.
- Ten o’clock or two o’clock starts, so the tour fits around your coach.
- Route, stops and timings sent through in advance for your paperwork.
- All resources supplied. Nothing to print, laminate or carry.
- Accompanying adults are free, so your ratios cost you nothing extra.