How can more children get closer to nature?

Enabling children to be closer to nature, especially by learning and exploring in wooded areas and forests, was recognised as a key actionin the government's 25-year Environment Plan, published earlier this year. Yet despite the well-proven benefits of children spending regular time outdoors-including health and wellbeing, attitudes to learning, and environmental awareness-there is poor understanding about the current level of outdoor activities for young people across England, particulary in wooded areas and forests.

The Bringing Children Closer to Nature survey aims to explore barriers and opportunities to activities in wooded areas and forests including the practice of Forest School, and it will quantify any issues preventing development and growth. Its three main aims are to:

1. Acquire basic information, including the number and distribution of schools and other organisations who do forest education activities including Forest School, and the levels of training and skills amng practitioners;

2.  Understand more about barriers and opportunities to establishing and sustaining forest education, includinf Forest School, among host organisations (e.g. schools, early years nurseries) and practitioners, and explore how these could be overcome;

3. Explore potential interest among woodland owners in providing greater access to woodland sites to support forest education, including Forest School.

The survey was launched in November 2018 and will remain open until the end of the year. Research outcomes will be summerarised in a freely-accessible report in early 2019. Those people interested in taking the survey can read more and follow a link to it here: www.sylva.org.uk/survey 

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