The Warwickshire Wildlife Trust plans to apply to open four primary schools through the free school programme. The primary schools will be founded in Warwickshire, Devon, Wiltshire and Birmingham. Consultation is currently underway as to their exact location. Working in conjunction with specialist educational consultants, a team from the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust is employed in creating a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) and once fully established an application will be made to the Department for Education. The Trust are aiming to submit the application by March 2017 and will roll out more schools if successful.
The Wildlife Trust will be able to dictate the educational philosophy and teaching of the schools and believe that using a school’s local natural environment for education will improve children’s learning. HandsamSchoolTripsAdvisor, has reported on multiple occasions on the correlation between outdoor learning and improved academic attainment and mental wellbeing. Ofsted echoes these findings stating that learning outside the classroom “contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils personal, social and emotional development and can also help to combat underachievement."
The number of acceptable reasons for founding a free school were expanded in August 2016. The expanded criteria includes social need, innovative need, strong demand and need for choice. The government aims to open 500 more free schools by 2020, which will take the total of establishments to over 900 and generate 500,000 more school places. Funded like academies, free schools can employ who they want, amend the school day and depart from the national curriculum. It is hoped that expanding the programme will stop the scramble for good school places, providing more choice and tailored learning for the needs of the region. The initiative however has always been controversial, with a series of high profile cases damaging the financial credibility and professional honesty of institutions. Concerns have also been voiced around the content of lessons and the business element intruding on education.
Visit the Nature Schools website on a regular basis to watch the progress of the application. See also the government page Free Schools: Open Schools and Successful Applications.
