Guide
What is forest school?
Forest school is regular time in the same woodland, with the same group, led by a qualified practitioner. Children (and adults) follow their own interests, take supported risks and get to know a place across the seasons. This guide is for anyone meeting it for the first time, whether your child is about to start or you are thinking of training to lead it.
Forest school in a few lines
A forest school programme has a few things that set it apart from a day out in the woods:
- It is long-term. Sessions come round often, every week or fortnight at best, for one group in one place, and carry on for months.
- It happens in a natural space, usually woodland, so the learners build a relationship with somewhere real and see it change through the year.
- It is learner-led. The leader offers, watches and supports. The children choose much of what they do and how they do it.
- Risk is supported. Fire, tools, climbing and getting muddy are part of it, with a risk-benefit assessment behind each one and an adult close by.
- It is run by a qualified forest school leader, who holds at least an accredited Level 3 forest school qualification and a current first aid certificate.
Those points come from the six principles set out by the Forest School Association (FSA), the UK's professional body for forest school.
The six forest school principles
The FSA sets out six principles that describe good practice. Here they are in the FSA's own words and order. Each one has its own section on our page about the forest school principles, with what it asks of a leader in the woods.
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The Long-Term Principle:
Forest School is a long-term process of frequent and regular sessions in a woodland or natural environment, rather than a one-off visit. Planning, adaptation, observations and reviewing are integral elements of Forest School.
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The Nature Principle:
Forest School takes place in a woodland or natural wooded environment to support the development of a relationship between the learner and the natural world.
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The Risk Principle:
Forest School offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment and to themselves.
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The Holistic Learning Principle:
Forest School aims to promote the holistic development of all those involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative learners.
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The Leadership Principle:
Forest School is run by qualified Forest School practitioners, who continuously maintain and develop their professional practice.
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The Community Principle:
Forest School uses a range of learner-centred processes to create a community for development and learning.
Taken together they describe the forest school ethos: trust in the learner, respect for the place, and a leader who plans carefully and then steps back.
Where forest school comes from
The roots are Scandinavian. Time outdoors in all weathers is part of ordinary life there (the word is friluftsliv, roughly "open-air living"), and Danish nurseries have long spent much of the day outside, with play leading the way.
In 1993 Bridgwater College in Somerset sent a group of its nursery nurses to see Danish pre-schools for themselves. What they saw became a forest school for the college's own crèche, and by 1995 the college was offering a forest school qualification. From there it spread. Wales and several English local authorities took it up around 2000, a national conference agreed a UK definition in 2002, and the Forest School Association was launched in July 2012 to look after standards across the UK.
What a forest school session looks like
No two sessions are the same, but most follow a similar rhythm:
- Before anyone arrives, the leader walks the site: fallen branches, the weather, the stream level, anything new.
- Arrival and a gathering circle. A welcome, a reminder of the group's agreed boundaries and ground rules, and what's on offer today.
- The main stretch of time. Free play and exploration alongside activities the leader offers: building a den, whittling with a peeler, mud kitchens, minibeast hunts, a rope and a tarp, tracking the seasons. Children drift in and out of what interests them.
- Fire and food. Often a small fire with a hot drink or a snack, which is as much about patience and safety as it is about warming up.
- Closing circle. A chance for everyone to share what they did, found or felt.
- After the session, the leader writes up observations and a short review, and the next session's plan grows out of what the group showed an interest in.
Sessions go ahead in most weathers, with the right clothing. Our forest school equipment guide covers what children wear through the year and what the leader brings, and planning a forest school session goes into the leader's side of it.
Ages and who it's for
Forest school works across ages. It is widely used in nurseries and early years, in primary schools (often a class at a time, through a term or more), in secondary schools, with home educators, with young people outside mainstream education and with adults. Many leaders run it for children and adults with additional needs, where a calm, unhurried space without a fixed outcome suits people who find a classroom hard.
For a parent, a few questions are worth asking a forest school you are thinking of booking: is the leader Level 3 qualified, do they hold an outdoor or paediatric first aid certificate, how often do sessions run, and is it the same group in the same place each time. Our guides to forest school qualifications and forest school first aid explain what the answers mean.
The benefits of forest school, and the evidence
The best-known UK study is by Liz O'Brien of Forest Research and Richard Murray of the New Economics Foundation, funded by the Forestry Commission. It followed 24 children in three case study areas in England over eight months, after earlier work in Wales, and found six themes in how the children changed:
- Confidence, which grew as children were given room and time to try things for themselves.
- Social skills: working alongside others, taking turns with tools, and noticing how what they did affected their friends.
- Language and communication: children talked more, with plenty in front of them to describe.
- Motivation and concentration: the wood held their attention, and children stuck with a task for longer.
- Physical skills: more stamina, and better control of both big movements and fine hand work.
- Knowledge and understanding: curiosity about the wood, and care for it.
The researchers saw effects beyond the children too. Teachers saw sides of their pupils they had not seen in class, and some families started going to the woods more because their children kept talking about it. (O'Brien and Murray, Forest School and its impacts on young children: case studies in Britain, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 2007.)
It is worth being honest about the evidence. That study was small and based on practitioners' observations, and a 2021 systematic review of forest school research in England (Garden and Downes, Education 3-13) found the research base still limited in quantity. What there is points the same way as the experience of leaders and families, and the long-term principle matters: the changes come from regular time in the woods, not a single visit.
Forest school, outdoor learning, forest kindergarten and beach school
These overlap, and people use the words loosely. Roughly:
- Outdoor learning is the broad term for any learning outside: a maths lesson on the field, a geography trip, a residential. It is often led by the curriculum and can be a one-off. Forest school is one particular kind, defined by the six principles.
- Forest kindergarten usually means early years provision where young children spend most or all of their day outdoors, a model common in Scandinavia and Germany. In Scotland, Forest Kindergarten is also a named approach for early years practitioners, with its own training and award. Many UK nurseries run forest school sessions without being a forest kindergarten.
- Beach school takes the forest school approach to the coast: rock pools, shells, sand, driftwood and weather off the sea. The FSA's Nature principle names a woodland or natural wooded environment, so beach school is a close cousin of forest school, borrowing its ethos. Leaders add an understanding of tides, rips and the shoreline to their risk-benefit thinking.
If you work with the youngest children, our page on forest school for nurseries covers how it fits alongside the EYFS.
If you want to lead it
Leading forest school starts with training: a Level 3 forest school leader qualification, usually taken over many months, covering practical skills, child development, woodland management and a period of running your own sessions, plus an outdoor first aid course. Start with our guide to forest school qualifications, then read writing a risk-benefit assessment and fire and tool safety.
Running forest school with the app
The Forest School App is made by forest school practitioners for the paperwork that sits around the six principles: the register and ratios, risk-benefit assessments stacked onto each session, observations tagged to a child's development, and the review that feeds the next plan. It works on your phone in the woods with no signal. It is free for practitioners.
Sources
- Forest School Association: Full principles and criteria for good practice
- Forest School Association: What is Forest School?
- Forest School Association: History of Forest School
- Forest Research: Forest School: a marvellous opportunity to learn (research summary, PDF)
- O'Brien, L. and Murray, R. (2007), Forest School and its impacts on young children: case studies in Britain, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 6(4), 249 to 265
- Garden, A. and Downes, G. (2021), A systematic review of forest schools literature in England, Education 3-13
- Learning through Landscapes: Forest Kindergarten Leader Course
- Teach Early Years: Learning on the beach (PDF)
Run forest school the way the principles describe.
Registers, risk-benefit assessments, observations and reviews on your phone in the woods, even with no signal.