How to Make a Success of Forest School

Forest School can look as if it needs woodland, a big budget and a team of specialists. One primary school started with an overgrown patch of 17 trees and a pile of donated logs. There was an old roadside bath too, and a higher level teaching assistant who'd just qualified.

You'll get a session routine you can copy: a weather check-in round the fire circle, the rules every time, a game, free play in the mud kitchen and hammocks, then hot chocolate and the best bits of the day. Add simple activities like leaf bashing, pine cone feeders and den building and you've got an afternoon that works week after week. Expect some resistance at first. One Year 6 group thought the mud kitchen was beneath them.

Over the same few years the school's exclusions fell sharply, which they put down to Forest School alongside their other nurture work.