We pride ourselves on providing equality of opportunity and diversity effectively. All children have a right to access experiences that will enrich their cultural capital and understanding of substantive and disciplinary knowledge, so our curriculum enrichment has been designed to enable all children to respond positively to artistic, cultural, musical and sporting opportunities.  

Beyond the scope of our curriculum, we have made use of our unique grounds and environment to further promote our children’s wider SMSC development. From reception, children in both schools partake in forest schools with a trained practitioner.    Woodlands Forest School supports our children by offering them a hands-on experimental learning opportunity that fosters creativity, resilience, and a deep connection to nature.  

Forest school learning is child centred and provides opportunities for holistic growth: Sessions are exploratory and problem solving based and encourage children to take risks (the aim being that their confidence and self-esteem, as well as their understanding and love for the natural world, will increase).  

Forest School is equitable because it offers children a safe, non-judgemental and nurturing environment where their learning is not measured against a scale or compared. The sessions do contribute to children’s academic learning because they are encouraged to:  

• Try new things
• Take risks
• Over come fears and barriers
• Use creativity and independence
• Explore and investigate
• Applying knowledge and skills to solve problems
• Cooperate and work as a team, valuing everyone’s contribution, ideas and effort (respect and tolerance).

Here are some quotes from our children about Forest Schools:

"I like it when we make the houses. It was a grass house with tree blocks." - Rupert

"I made a woodlice house. It was fun!" - Joey

"I like it when we had to find the bugs and we worked with our friends." - Maddie