Outdoor Education: Where It Started and Why It Matters

I was on Christopher Vowles' Teachers' Talk Radio show this week talking about outdoor education, international schools and SEND. It got me thinking about how much of what we do at Fetcham started long before I arrived here, and how much of it I brought home from the other side of the world.

I didn't set out to become the headteacher who spends his Wednesdays in wellies. It happened gradually, starting years ago when I was teaching in Nottingham. I had a brilliant head called Jane Swingler and an outdoor education lead called Caroline Freeman and between them they showed me something I hadn't properly understood: that children learn differently when they're outside. Not better or worse. Differently. In ways that a classroom on its own can't replicate.

That stayed with me through every school I've led since. Children who spend meaningful time outside take risks they wouldn't take at a table. They collaborate without being told to. They develop resilience when things go wrong, because things always go wrong when you're building something in the mud with a group of six year olds.

A School That Already Believed

When I arrived at Fetcham Village Infant School three years ago, the school already had a wonderful Forest School. That mattered to me. It told me something about the values of the place before I'd even started. My deputy, Emma, lives and breathes outdoor education and she's our Forest Schools expert. Having that shared conviction in the senior leadership team means outdoor learning isn't my pet project. It's embedded in who we are.

Our teachers are expected to teach outside. That's not a suggestion. It's an expectation, in the same way that we expect high-quality phonics teaching and rigorous maths. We have high expectations of our children academically. We also recognise that they are four, five, six and seven years old. They need to move, to explore, to get their hands dirty. The outdoor curriculum gives us that balance.

The Case for Getting Muddy

I sometimes hear the argument that outdoor education takes time away from "proper" learning. I'd push back firmly. The child who can't sit still during a phonics lesson is often the one leading a group building a den in Forest School. The child who finds writing difficult might be the one who works out how to tie a knot nobody else can manage. When you see that, it changes how you think about that child, and how they think about themselves.

The question I keep coming back to is this: what kind of school do we want children to remember? One where they sat at tables and filled in worksheets? Or one where they planted hedgerows, harvested broccoli, built fences, coppiced trees and learnt that the natural world is something worth caring about?

I know which one I'd choose. And the evidence backs it up: outdoor learning develops fine motor skills, builds self-regulation, strengthens collaborative problem solving and gives children a relationship with the environment that no textbook can replicate. None of those things appear on a data spreadsheet. All of them matter.

Coming Up This Week

This is the first of three posts this week exploring outdoor education, prompted by the conversation on Teachers' Talk Radio. On Wednesday I'll write about what our Wild Wednesdays actually look like in practice. On Friday, the bigger question: should every child in England have the right to this kind of education?