Forest School

Forest School is a child-centred inspirational learning process developed in Scandinavia. It offers opportunities for holistic growth through regular sessions. It is a long-term program that supports play, exploration and supported risk taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting.

Here at Hailey School, we are fortunate enough to have our own on-site woodland. We develop and train our own Forest School Leader. This allows us to deliver a quality Forest School experience, which holds to all six key principles that shape and govern the Forest School ethos.

These six principles are:

1. Forest School is a long-term process of regular sessions, rather than one-off or infrequent visits; the cycle of planning, observation, adaptation and review links each session.
2. Forest School takes place in a woodland or natural environment to support the development of a lifelong relationship between the learner and the natural world.
3. Forest School uses a range of learner-centred processes to create a community for being, development and learning.
4. Forest School aims to promote the holistic development of all involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative learners.
5. Forest School offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment and to themselves.
6. Forest School is run by qualified Forest School practitioners, who continuously maintain and develop their professional practice.

We believe that Forest School is an excellent way of helping us secure our vision for those in our community. The process helps and facilitates more than just knowledge-gathering, it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually. It creates a safe, non-judgmental nurturing environment for learners to try things out and take risks. Forest School inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it helping participants, to become healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners.