If you go down to the woods today you’ll find more and more children at play.
In my local woods there are forest schools and outdoor play groups setting up “camp” almost every day of the week. You’ll see awnings stretched between the trees, a camp fire beneath, small tents, hammocks, mobile toilets, and children running around in brightly coloured jump-suits.
However, these forest schools are only for pre-school children and outdoor education is a very small part of primary or secondary schooling in Scotland. This is despite it being part of the so-called “curriculum for excellence”. A Nature Scotland study in 2023 found that when you add up the time spent by primary school pupils on outdoor education in a year, it only comes to seven minutes a week.
So this week The Scottish Parliament agreed to make a week-long expedition to an outdoor education centre a legal right for every child. At the moment only a quarter of primary pupils have that opportunity, and only a third of secondary pupils. At first the children’s minister Natalie Don-Innes said that was unaffordable – it would cost £40 million a year. But this week she changed her mind and has agreed to consider a phased introduction of the scheme.
Headteachers and teaching unions have expressed doubts about the practicality of an outdoor week for every pupil. But everyone agrees on its benefits – promoting a sense of adventure, knowledge of the environment, and working with others. Although the idea started out as a Private Member’s Bill, introduced by the Conservative MSP and outdoor enthusiast Liz Smith, it is now up to the government to make it happen.
As so often these days, the law precedes the practical application of a policy. It creates a sense of entitlement or ambition – on NHS waiting times, on homelessness, on climate change targets – which then the government struggles to fulfil because it doesn’t have the money. Or at least won’t raise the taxes required to pay for the new law. It’s a new and interesting way to move society forward. But it requires us to accept there are two different types of law, those which need to be obeyed immediately, or there will be consequences, and those that are just ambitions.
More outdoor education might do something to tackle our increasing problem of pupil disengagement and misbehaviour. A government report in 2023 found that 67 per cent of teachers had been subjected to verbal abuse in the previous week, 59 per cent said they’d suffered physical aggression. This week the independent Commission on School Reform became the latest group to call for more “consequences” for bad behaviour in class. It says it is seriously affecting the education of the majority of pupils and damaging teachers’ morale. Head teachers, it says, should be given the power to expel disruptive pupils.
Speaking of verbal abuse, Scotland got a blast of it on Tuesday in Donald Trump’s hour-long lecture to the United Nations. We should not be taxing the North Sea oil companies but encouraging them to drill for more. We are ruining the beautiful Scottish countryside with windmills. Our climate change ambitions are the result of the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. And Europe is going to hell by letting too many illegal immigrants swamp their countries. So much for Keir Starmer and King Charles’ attempts last week to tame Trump’s outrageous opinions.
Trump probably admires Scottish castles but would he welcome the National Trust’s more recent emphasis on preserving the environment =? It’s just taken over the Treshnish Islands off Mull and the Westing Holms islands in Shetland, to add to its 76,000 acres of countryside and its 46 Munros. At the Trust’s annual general meeting this week, it was announced that 2024/25 was a record year for visitor numbers (5.6m) and income (£91million). It shows the increasing demand for Scotland’s great outdoors, its forests, moors, gardens and wildlife.
Though, there is one wildlife exception……seagulls. The menace of seagull attacks on unwary people in towns and cities was the subject of a “Seagull Summit” in Inverness this week. The relevant minister Jim Fairlie felt obliged to announce £100,000 in funding for deterrent measures such as spikes, netting and lasers.
That was dismissed as “pitiful” by the MSP who called the summit, Douglas Ross. But he wasn’t prepared to suggest what should be done about the real cause of the aggressive seagulls, the birds coming on-shore because climate change has taken away their food source at sea.
Feelings have run so high on the issue that it led to a row in parliament between Mr Ross and the government’s business manager Jamie Hepburn. The squawking became so bitter as they left the chamber that Mr Hepburn ending up losing his job because of his unseemly behaviour.
Things can be tough in the playground of outdoor education.
