Many schools visit our education centres.

The children come to learn about nature, to go pond-dipping or rock pooling, to hunt for insects in the meadow, to learn about the landscape.

We love engaging with them and many schools return year after year.

There is one thing that really irks me though.

Some schools insist their children wear high-visibility waistcoats, usually fluorescent yellow.

It looks like we are hosting a seminar of highway contractors or traffic wardens, not nine-year -olds on a field trip.

Now we have our own quite rigorous risk assessments to help us manage 30 or 60 children at a time, and the schools have the same.

Hi-vis waistcoats might be useful and reassuring if the class was walking down the main road or in a crowded museum.

But in the middle of a meadow, when we are trying to teach children the wonder of wild things, the jackets jar with me.

The hi-vis yellow clashes with the surroundings and it the protective waistcoats feels like another barrier to getting closer to nature.

Subtly, it is reinforcing the message that the outdoors is inherently dangerous, and you would be safer inside on the computer.

Part of growing up is about being able to judge how risky an activity is.

If we constantly skew children’s perception of how dangerous the natural environment is, then they may grow up without having climbed a tree, or paddled in a stream and we will have failed as educators and parents.

Pete Crawford is head of people and wildlife at the Sussex Wildlife Trust