We know that ‘good’ mental health in children helps them to:

• Develop and fulfil their potential
• Attend school regularly
• Engage in learning

All schools are now under a statutory duty to promote the welfare of their pupils, which includes: preventing impairment of children’s health or development, and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes. 

The latest KCSIE guidelines has an increased emphasis on mental health and wellbeing. The new guidelines recognise the vital role schools play in promoting positive mental health.

As the government prescribes, schools must embed an ‘evidence-based, holistic, whole school or college approach to supporting mental health’ in their staff and students.

The Department for Education (DfE) and the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities published guidance on the key principles of a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.

These include:

• leadership and management that supports and champions efforts to promote emotional health and wellbeing
• curriculum teaching and learning to promote resilience and support social and emotional learning
• staff development to support their own wellbeing and that of pupils and learners
• an ethos and environment that promotes respect, and values diversity
• enabling student voice to influence decisions

Why schools are not able to achieve this:

School staff are stretched for time, the requirements of the National Curriculum lead to crammed timetables and excessive planning and marking. With the best intentions, teachers don’t have sufficient time to listen to their pupils and when it comes to poor mental health the needs of a child or young person can often be complex and time-consuming. 

School leaders say they are finding it increasingly difficult to get external help for children with lower-level mental health problems and therefore this duty of care falls to the staff themselves. Those staff also need to be given the right emotional and practical support so that they can best support those pupils.

Government ministers have been accused of failing to grasp the “tidal wave” of mental ill health blighting children’s lives, after research found that only a quarter of English primaries are able to offer vital school-based support.

• Almost 1 in 5 pupils aged 7 to 16 now thought to have a mental health disorder
• According to new figures, pupils in almost three-quarters (73.4%) of primary schools in England will have had no access to the new mental health support teams (MHSTs) by the end of 2024.

As one teacher cites, a lot of the time, she is effectively their “social worker, carer, and safeguarder”. “I also have a lot of children with special needs in my class, but lots of them are on the waiting list for a support plan. It can take up to a year and a half for the funding to come through, and in the meantime, the teacher’s dealing with this massive issue, without any support.”

Likening the situation to the Baby P scandal, whose killing in 2007 resulted in a public inquiry to prevent similar cases, Vic Goddard, headteacher at Passmores Academy in Essex, said: 

“I worry it’s going to take something like that before anybody spends any money (in education). All you do is you pray that it’s not one of yours.” 

What we can do to help:

Day Visits for Schools

After School Enrichment Clubs

Residential School Trips (1-4 nights)

We understand how to build the emotional foundations that children and young people need to thrive, be mentally healthy and learn successfully. This includes having resilience and self-confidence, being able to handle difficult situations and manage their own feelings; as well as being aware of the kinds of things that affect – and improve – their mental health.

We build confident, open, healthy and trusting relationships with pupils to help them feel safe. Positive relationships with a trusted adult are an important protective factor for children and young people, helping them thrive, remain resilient and learn effectively.

We offer activities that are more likely to engage a struggling pupil in school, we have the freedom to think more creatively and use interactive strategies that maintain their interest and help them feel that they belong.

Many studies have shown the positive impact of outdoor learning on mental health. Just being outside for prolonged periods, boosts the immune system and improves physical and mental health. Children and young people with a mental health problem are more likely to be absent from school without permission. This is especially true for children and young people with an emotional or behavioural problem.

Prolonged contact with a natural outdoor environment has been implemented in various educational practices, showing that exposure to nature at school leads to benefits in physical activity (motor function and competencies) and child behaviours (cooperative play, social behaviour) in children from preschool to primary school and adolescents. 

Children need to experience regular and sustained experiences in the natural environment to create a relationship between the learner and the natural world and foster self-esteem, confidence, independency, and creativity.

The proven benefits of outdoor learning and experiences:

• Improves self-awareness and self-reliance
• Develops flexible and creative thinking
• Improves the ability to focus
• Fosters a positive and optimistic outlook and a positive view of self & others thus creating positive relationships
• Offers opportunities to action plan, set and achieve goals
• Develops positive coping strategies and resilience during challenging situations
• Improves independent decision making
• Gives opportunities to practise impulse control and self-regulation
• Builds emotional literacy and communication skills

Add to this that:

• Fewer than one in 10 children regularly play in wild spaces, according to a Natural England study 

So there is a huge need to offer this in schools.

Nature serves as a multi-sensory playground for children, engaging their senses in ways that indoor environments often cannot. The sights, sounds, and textures of the natural world contribute to the development of neural pathways, promoting sensory integration and motor skills. Within this early exposure lays the foundation for enhanced cognitive abilities later in life.

Outdoor Learning and Forest School activities are unique and multi-curricular. The pupils can be learning maths, science, literacy, P.E., food tech, design tech and PSHE all in one session. These can be planned but also occur spontaneously, in child-led circumstances. Much of these involve embodied enaction –  learning through doing – sawing, tying knots, preparing food, lifting and carrying, collecting. 

Exercise

The children are exercising their bodies in a wide variety of ways and also experiencing life and making choices about their play and learning. This choice-making where there is an element of risk is essential for brain development. Being grounded within their bodies, and making decisions about how they control themselves and how they manipulate their surrounding world that promotes positive growth in the decision-making areas of the brain and provides a platform for them to become more developed adults who can assess risk and make better choices. Not only is it exercise for their bodies but for their minds too.

Physical Contact

Children have to decide what is appropriate physical contact with other children and abide by their ability to control their bodies when doing so. If they don’t, they live with the consequence and have to sort out the resulting fallout themselves. Children learn to respect the natural world around them and each other. These outdoor tasks develop teamwork, communication, confidence, cognitive skills and very often, real-world applications of science.

They learn to know themselves

In the Outdoor Learning environment, we get to experience the quiet, withdrawn child who barely speaks in class, who is now zooming around chatting about how they are a forest ninja. A child with ADHD is patiently settled into a carving task, showing utter concentration and focus. This journey of self-development in the children, being outdoors trying new things, allows them a glimpse of a different version of themselves. This is because the outdoors teaches us so many lessons without us even realising it. It is the original environment for human learning

Day to day, we can observe the calming effect that nature has on young minds. Time outdoors provides a reprieve from the overstimulation of modern life, reducing stress levels and enhancing emotional wellbeing. Time spent outdoors has been linked to lower rates of anxiety and improved ADHD symptoms in children, highlighting the importance of incorporating nature into early childhood experiences.

A study in South Wales examined the process of implementing a regular outdoor learning curriculum in a number of primary schools, largely focusing on Key Stage 2. Pupils and teachers noticed improvements in pupils’ engagement with learning, concentration and behaviour, as well as positive impacts on pupils health and wellbeing and also teachers’ job satisfaction.

It is hardly surprising therefore that ‘green social prescribing’ is a growing trend where adults struggling with their mental health, are led through nature-based activities that benefit their physical and mental health.

So prescribe Outdoor Learning in your setting today!