Some schools book Urban Quest once. Plenty Valley Christian College booked it three times — twice for students and once for staff. The staff event happened because the teachers watched what happened to the students and wanted the same thing for themselves.
That sequence tells you more about Urban Quest’s school incursions than any product description could.
James Kearney is Head of Senior School at Plenty Valley Christian College in Doreen. In the interview filmed immediately after their second student event, he describes what he’s observed across all three events — and why booking at short notice for the third time was an easy decision.
The Brief — What Plenty Valley Was Looking For
James’s requirements were specific from the start:
“We were looking for something where our students are working together, they’re having fun, and problem solving whilst doing teamwork. That was what was important to us.”
For Year 10 to 12 students specifically, the brief had an additional dimension. Senior students need activities that treat them as capable rather than supervised:
“Something they could do independently — that would give them a sense of independence, but also an opportunity to build friendships and connections further by doing something a little bit hard but a little bit fun at the same time.”
That balance — genuinely challenging, genuinely enjoyable, genuinely independent — is difficult to find in school activities at this year level. Most activities either underestimate senior students or require so much teacher facilitation that the independence element is lost entirely.
Three Events, One School
Event One — 80 Year 10 and 11 Students as an End-of-Year Activity
Plenty Valley ran their first Urban Quest incursion with 80 Year 10 and 11 students as an end-of-year activity. The event ran on school grounds, within a one-hour window, with students in their normal class groupings and staff moving around to check in rather than facilitate.
The engagement level exceeded what James expected:
“We had excellent engagement. Many teams — even once the lunch bell had gone — were continuing to persist. We saw students running from activity to activity. Everyone gathered together really eager to hear who won. That just showed us the level of engagement we had.”
Students running past the lunch bell to finish a challenge is not a common outcome of school activities. It’s the signal that the competitive format produced genuine investment rather than dutiful participation.
Event Two — 70 Staff Members at the Start of the New Year
What happened next is the most distinctive part of Plenty Valley’s Urban Quest story. After the student event, the teachers wanted in.
“We originally did this for an end-of-year activity with our Year 10 and 11s. At the start of the following year, we were thinking — how can we start the year with something that’s more than just meetings? What’s something really fun that we can do together? And Urban Quest came to mind quickly.”
Seventy staff members ran their own Urban Quest event as a year-kick-off activity. The experience that had engaged their most senior students was adapted and delivered for the teaching staff — a different brief, same competitive structure, same school grounds.
“Our staff had a great time. It was a way to start the year with something that had a bit of excitement and enjoyment. Having fun together is just an important way to build team.”
The fact that watching their students’ engagement was what prompted the staff booking is worth dwelling on. It means the student event served two purposes simultaneously — a genuine team building experience for Years 10 and 11, and an unsolicited demonstration to the teaching staff of what Urban Quest could produce for them.
Event Three — 150 Year 10, 11 and 12 Students the Following Year
The following year, James was looking for something at short notice. Urban Quest came to mind again:
“This year came around and we were wondering — what’s something we could maybe organise at the last minute? And once again Urban Quest were really accommodating and were able to make this happen really easily in a few days.”
150 students across Years 10, 11, and 12 — the full senior school cohort — ran the incursion. The engagement mirrored what James had seen the previous year.
The No-Phone School That Used Phones
Plenty Valley Christian College operates a strict no-phone policy during the school day. For a technology-based incursion that uses smartphones as the game platform, this requires a deliberate decision and a specific conversation with students.
James’s approach to that conversation is worth sharing in full:
“We’re a school that doesn’t permit mobile phones during the school day. But we feel like our students typically we can trust them. So we just said, ‘Hey, you’ve got this Urban Quest event coming up. You’re permitted to use your phones.’ And they were super excited about having that freedom for once. I think that even helped give it a bit of a buzz. We finished and just said, ‘Okay, that’s the end of it.’ Pop them back away.”
“I think it helps when students feel like they’re trusted with the devices.”
That framing — trust as a motivating force rather than a risk to manage — produced a specific outcome. Students who feel trusted with a device in a structured context are more motivated, more careful, and more engaged than students who feel supervised. The phone ban didn’t prevent the tech-based incursion. It amplified it.
This is the consistent finding across no-phone schools that have run Urban Quest incursions. The controlled, purposeful use of smartphones during a structured challenge — where the phone is the game platform, not a social distraction — is a different proposition to unstructured phone access, and schools with strict policies have found it sits comfortably within their approach to device use.
What James Thinks It Transfers Back To
When asked how the experience connects to classroom learning and life beyond school, James’s answer went beyond the expected teamwork and communication points:
“Young people can kind of get trapped in the digital world. Something where they’re connecting and working face to face and active — as well as communication skills — all sorts of things that are going to help them feel like they have a place, but they also have something to contribute. I think it definitely transfers back to the classroom.”
That observation — students discovering they have something to contribute — is the outcome that matters most for senior students who may have spent years being more confident in digital interaction than face-to-face engagement. An activity that requires genuine physical and social presence, where contribution is visible and valued, produces a different kind of confidence than classroom performance does.
Why On-Campus Made the Difference
James was clear about the practical value of the incursion format over an excursion:
“Because it’s run on the school site, a lot of those hurdles you have to jump taking students off-site for activities can be challenging. In this way we have our students allocated to their normal classes, our staff were here so they could just move around and check in. It fits into about an hour — it was perfect for that time frame.”
For schools with tight timetables, limited transport budgets, or risk management policies that make off-site activities complex, an on-campus incursion removes every logistical barrier in one decision. The activity comes to the school rather than the school coming to the activity.
James’s Advice to Other School Coordinators
“It’s great. It fits into about an hour, which was perfect. Something that was fun but also got the students thinking and using different skills — that was really important to us.”
And on whether he’d recommend it:
“Absolutely. This is our third time — twice with our students and once with our staff. And as I said, this year came around and once again Urban Quest were really accommodating and were able to make this happen really easily in a few days.”
Three events. One school. Students who ran past the lunch bell to finish. Teachers who saw it and wanted the same. A no-phone school that gave students their phones and watched the engagement lift.
Explore Urban Quest’s school incursions →
Read what teachers look for in a school incursion →
Read how tech-based incursions work in no-phone schools →
Contact Urban Quest for a school incursion proposal →
Plenty Valley Christian College in Doreen, Victoria has run Urban Quest on-campus incursions three times — 80 Year 10-11 students as an end-of-year activity, 70 staff members as a new-year kick-off, and 150 Year 10-12 students the following year. All three events were delivered on school grounds within a one-hour format.
