Outdoor learning is challenging traditional education root and branch, by teaching children self-esteem, team work and how to value nature.

A quiet forest school revolution is spreading, with East Anglia and Worcestershire leading the charge. So far, the Forest School Association charity has helped 12,000 teachers and other professionals undertake training.

The movement is strongly influenced by contemporary Scandinavian practice but also by earlier, pioneering open-air education concepts such as Margaret McMillan’s outdoor nurseries. Now it is spreading organically, spurred by concerns about children’s loss of contact with nature and worries that a cotton-wool-wrapped generation no longer gets the chance to take risks.

Forest school works in urban environments too – anywhere with access to some trees and space, says Liz Bicknell, a veteran outdoor learning specialist. “Too much of education is orientated towards going to university. I want to give children an appreciation of the cycles of nature…”

Schools are also being influenced by a wider revival of interest in the outdoors, reflected in the growing popularity of landscape writer Robert MacFarlane and of campaigns by the National Trust, English Nature and others to get children outdoors, says Forest school trainer Rich Sylvester of Green Light Trust.

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