School Visit

The Oceanarium welcomes school groups of all ages, abilities and sizes, all year round and is the perfect all-weather venue for school visits.

With 12 spectacular naturally themed environments set across two floors, your class will engage in a global journey through the waters of the world. 

With a huge variety of incredible wildlife representing the vast biodiversity on Earth, there are 1000’s of amazing creatures waiting to be encountered! From otters to penguins, turtles to jellyfish and fascinating sharks and stingrays, the habitats, adaptations and importance of these awe inspiring creatures are here to be discovered.

We have options for schools visits:

Silver (Self-Guided)    

This is our standard option where you self-guide your class around the aquarium.  Download our School Resource Pack here.  This great pack provides you resources to help you guide your group and get the most from your visit.

Gold (1 Hours Guided Tour)

This option includes a one hour guided tour led by one of our marine experts.  It can be adapted to age, ability and topic being studied. Maximum of 20 children per tour.

Upgrade your visit to a PLUS package for an additional £1 per child.

Our PLUS package includes use of our under cover lunch area (if required) and a 30-minute interactive School Session on the topic of your choice.

Please Note: Our undercover lunch area included in our Silver PLUS and Gold PLUS packages are restricted to 20 children for 30 minutes, and larger groups will need to be staggered accordingly.  This area can only be booked from 12:30pm. 

Peak months are May to July and off-peak are Augusto to April.

We offer the following free adult ratios:         

Pre School (3-5 yrs):  1:3
Primary School (5-11 yrs): 1:5
Secondary School (12-15 yrs): 1:10    

Additional adults, we charge a discounted entry price of £11.99
We also offer a free carer should any of the children require extra support (proof is required). 

How to book:

To receive the discounted school rates, they must be pre-booked a minimum of 2 weeks prior to the term-time visit date. We recommended booking as early as possible to avoid disappointment.

Large groups will be divided into more manageable numbers with a maximum of 20 children per group, with staggered entry into the Oceanarium.

To book or to find out more about our award winning educational visits, please call 01202 311993 ext 208 or email info@oceanarium.co.uk

Once booked, you will receive a confirmation email which you will need to show on arrival.  A pre-invoice agreement will also be attached and must be fully completed and sent back to us as soon as possible to confirm your place.

Terms:

• Schools must book at least 2 weeks  in advance to receive these discounted rates.  Please note the bookings co-ordinator works office hours.
• If you need to cancel your booking, please provide us with as much notice as  possible (at least 48 hours).
• To make your school’s visit more manageable, we suggest keeping groups to a maximum of 20 , with staggered entry into the Oceanarium of at least 20 minutes and keeping to your allotted arrival times.  
• To ease crowding in our admissions area, please wait outside for all you school to arrive and enter through admissions at the allocated time.
• Schools must be supervised at all times by the accompanying teachers/adults at the relevant child/teacher ratio.  Any visitor found to be constantly disruptive or inconsiderate to other visitors will be asked to leave.
• The under cover lunch area for PLUS option visits is only available after 12.30pm due to Penguin Feed taking place in the area before  this time.
• We accept payment by invoice or payment by card/cash on arrival. This will be agreed during the booking process.

Award winning – Best Educational Day Out

We are proud that we won the Best Educational Day Out in the South West for 2019.  Over 25,000 genuine families voted for their favourite attractions which made it very competitive and exciting.
It is rewarding to know that families and schools are pleased with the educational experience delivered by the Ocenarium and highly trained staff, and more importantly, that we are engaging with them in areas of conservation, education and influencing environmentally friendly behaviour in future generations. 

Testimonials

Preschool

“I wanted to send you a quick email to thank you for a brilliant trip yesterday. We were greeted by friendly staff on entrance who booked us in no trouble and provided us with maps to the Oceanarium.  They were amazing and friendly, great customer services.

Emily gave us out interactive session and this was just brilliant! The shark bone and turtle shell was all the children talked about on their way round and all they have spoken about today.  Emily was friendly and spoke to the children in a lovely tone and really engaged the children when talking to them.

The Offshore café was wonderful, the team were amazing and very helpful and the food was lovely.  We had a lovely lunch and am glad we did the hot meals for the children.

Please tell all the staff that Littleworld Day Nursery thank them for all their hard work and everything was just brilliant.  I’m really pleased I booked the Oceanarium for the trip and would recommend it to anyone and will definitely come back again in years to come.

Thank you so much for an amazing day.”

Littleworld Day Nursery

Primary School

“My class had a lovely visit to the Bournemouth Oceanarium yesterday. Your staff were very friendly and helpful and the talk for the children was fantastic - the staff member who took it really got the children involved and even learnt their names.

We all had a really successful field-trip and the children learnt so much.”

Braishfield Primary School