Forest schools flourish as youngsters log off and learn from nature | Schools

After more than a year of bans with restricted access to nature, Magdalena Begh was delighted when her six-year-old daughter came home from the forest school and told her that she had found three rat skeletons. One of them, Alia told her, was "pretty fresh". "These little observations are very important to your learning - it's amazing," says Begh.

Since Alia and her nine-year-old sister Hana went to the after-school club Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature in North London in June, they have been using clay, learning about insects and making campfires, jam and bows and arrows.

You are part of a wave of children across the UK who have been attending forest schools since the pandemic began, many since September.

Of the more than 200 forest schools surveyed by the Forest School Association (FSA), around two-thirds said that demand for their services had increased since March 2020. Reasons cited were increased awareness of the benefits of being outdoors, particularly in relation to stress, and fear, Covid safety and dissatisfaction with the curriculum after months of pandemic home schooling.

"I don't think it's ever been more popular," says Gareth Wyn Davies, FSA executive director, who expects demand to continue to grow. But there is still a long way to go. “It's a fairly young sector, a little over 20 years old. And it's a grassroots moment - it doesn't have that top-down government attention yet. "

Forest schools, all about unstructured play, exploration and intrinsic motivation, arrived in the UK in 1993. Inspired by the outdoor culture - or Friluftsliv - of Scandinavia, the sessions are usually either entirely or predominantly outdoors and are intended to complement rather than replace traditional education.

State schools are increasingly organizing forest schools for schoolchildren as part of everyday school life, because these are considered beneficial for mental and physical health, behavior and school success - and are also relatively "Covid-safe".

Growing up in a village in the middle of nature, says Begh, she has always been interested in enrolling her daughters for the forest school. When she heard of someone nearby, she immediately wrote down their names. "They were very excited after the first session - I've never seen them so happy after doing an after-school club like this."

Abby Sutcliffe, director of Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature. Photo: Andy Hall / The Observer

Abby Sutcliffe, director of the Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature forest school, which works with 100 children a week in after-school care and 60 students in schools, says there has been "massive uptake" in the past year. "It's a combination of lockdowns and people realizing that being outdoors is pretty good for your sanity."

They hosted free sessions for local children during the initial lockdown and have just completed a year-long youth program of bushcraft, blacksmithing, and herbalism. While some forest schools are held on National Trust land or in private forests, Sutcliffe operates as an urban forest school in public spaces, including a nature reserve and canal park. The mental health and wellbeing benefits are "tangible," she says.

Schools are turning to Forest School to teach social, emotional, and physical skills to children who are rusty during the lockdown, says Vicki Stewart, director of Brightwood Training near Swindon. She says the forest school is also being used to meet children's needs, which have changed since the 1990s but have been particularly accelerated by the pandemic.

"Children are inside, using technology to talk to their friends instead of going outside, and they are relying more and more on technology - more has happened since Covid."

She teaches kids old-fashioned group games like hide and seek, catching, and grandmother's steps because they can't play them - partly, she says, because of Covid, but also for safety reasons when playing outdoors. and pressure to perform.

But while forest schools are leading kids away from technology, technology still “sneaks in” through their imaginations, says Anna Bell, director of the Kent Forest School. “Now when a kid is making camp, not always, but mostly, there will be a flat screen TV made from a piece of wood, there will be a remote control, there will be an Xbox or something. ”

Bans are "a chance for families to get off the treadmill," said Lewis Ames, co-director of the Devon-based forest school Children of the Forest. They have seen a surge in applications since the pandemic began, with around 150 families on their waiting list for toddler groups and 50-60 children on their forest school waiting list for home schooled children.

“This break gave a lot of families time to think and walk: 'Does this actually work? Or do we just survive and get through? '"Says Ames. "Which then led many of the families who started with us to say 'actually no, that's not true'."

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