What forest school actually is
The six principles of forest school
Six principles, agreed by the UK forest-school community and set out by the Forest School Association, are what separate forest school from a nice walk in a wood. Not a checklist, and not a standard anyone marks you against — a description of the thing itself. This is what each one asks of you, and how we help.
Most software for this sector is a booking system with a tree on the logo. It handles the register and the money and stops at the treeline. We started at the other end: at what a leader is actually doing under the trees, and at the six things that make it forest school rather than childcare outdoors. Everything in the app hangs off one of the six, and where it doesn't yet reach, we say so.
1. Forest school is a long-term process
Regular, repeated sessions in the same wood, across the seasons — not a visit, not a taster day. Planning, observation, adaptation and review aren't paperwork bolted on afterwards; they are the process, going round and round. The relationship, with the place and with the group, is what does the work, and relationships take time.
How we help. A term lays down its whole block of sessions in one go, and each session's review carries forward into the next one's plan — so last week's "what I'd change" is sitting in front of you while you plan this week. Our guide to planning a session walks through the cycle properly.
2. Forest school takes place in a woodland or natural wooded environment
A wood, and a relationship with it — running in both directions. The learners build a connection with the natural world, and you look after the place while you're using it. That second half gets forgotten: the principle asks for sustainable management and an eye on your own impact, not just a nice backdrop.
How we help. Each wood carries its emergency plan, readable offline under the trees. It also carries its survey: the specific things in it worth knowing about — the leaning ash by the gate, the stream crossing that floods, the badger sett — each with its own inspection history. Flag one and it appears on your daily site check by name, with what to watch for. "No dangerous trees?" can be ticked while thinking about nothing in particular. "The leaning ash — drops deadwood in high wind" sends you to look at the tree. And a management plan holds the other half: whose land it is, when the trees were last surveyed, what's resting and why.
3. Forest school promotes the holistic development of all those involved
The whole child, not a curriculum box: resilient, confident, independent and creative learners. It's about who a child is becoming, which is a slower and less tidy thing to notice than whether they can name a leaf.
How we help. Observations tag the FSA's own NETA areas — confidence, creativity, resilience, independence and wellbeing — as you notice them, in the wood, one tap, gloves on. Baseline to latest shows the distance a child has travelled, and a learning journey comes out the other end for the family. See observations & learning journeys.
4. Forest school offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks
Tools, fire, climbing, the stream when it's higher than last week — taken on with support, so that risk becomes judgement. This is risk-benefit, not risk elimination, and it is the principle that quietly dies first. Nobody announces they've dropped the fire. It just stops happening, one cautious term at a time, and what's left is a walk in a wood with rules.
How we help. Every risk assessment names the benefit before the hazard, because a document that opens with hazards argues for doing less until the knives disappear. The dynamic risk log records the calls you make on the day — the stream is high, here's what we changed, here's why we still went — which is the record that you were making judgements rather than avoiding them. See writing a risk-benefit assessment and our free risk assessment templates.
5. Forest school is run by qualified practitioners
A minimum of an accredited Level 3 Forest School qualification, and a commitment to keep developing your practice. Not a certificate on a wall: continuing professional development, and the reflective habit that goes with it.
How we help. Your qualifications, DBS, first aid and CPD live on your record, not a setting's — so they travel with you to every forest school you work with, and you never re-enter them. Expiries are chased before they lapse, and you have a shareable, verified passport page for anyone who asks. Freelance? Start with the freelance leader's kit.
6. Forest school uses learner-centred processes
Following the child's interests and choices rather than an adult agenda, and building a community that learns together — practitioners included. The session belongs to the learners.
How we help. An observation can carry the child's own words, kept verbatim and set apart as a quotation — because every other line in a session record is an adult writing about a child, and no amount of that adds up to learner-centred practice. "It's a bug hotel and the woodlice are the guests" is not a sentence an adult would ever write.
And what a child wants to do next becomes an interest: raised in the woods off the back of what you noticed, it lands on the plan for their next session, and when you build the week around it, their record shows the thread from "she wanted a roof on the den" to "we built the roof". Following a child becomes something you did, rather than something you meant to do. Each group also keeps its own charter — the rules the children agreed, in their words, readable in the wood.
And where we fall short. The pen is still in an adult's hand. We can hold what a child said, but a leader is the one typing it — and for the youngest children, who can't be quoted accurately, the truest record would be their voice itself. Recording that is what we're building next. We'd rather tell you where the edge is than let a tidy screen imply there isn't one.
The six, inside the app
Sign in and you'll find a six principles page of your own: not what we do, but what your record actually shows against each one. How many sessions you've run this year and how many have no review. What's surveyed in your wood and what's due a look. Whether your team's first aid is in date. Every line links to the place you'd go to do something about it.
It's a mirror, not a score. Nothing is marked, nothing is red, and a wood with nothing flagged in its survey isn't a failing wood — it might just be a wood you know well. But if you've been meaning to get back to proper reviews, it will say so, quietly, every time you sign in.
A principle is not a checklist
Worth saying plainly: these are a description of good practice, not a form to complete. Nobody inspects you against the six principles, and no app can make your practice principled. What software can do is stop the admin from quietly eroding the things that matter — so the fire stays, the reviews get written, and the tree you're worried about gets looked at.
If you do want the inspection angle, it's here: what Ofsted and the FSA look for. The short version is that running proper forest school produces, as a by-product, every record anyone will ever ask you for.
Software that keeps the fire lit.
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