Green Schools Revolution: Wilding Schools are hitting the ground running!
The summer term has been a really exciting time for the Green Schools Revolution: Wilding Schools project, with many of our schools beginning to order equipment and start changing their grounds to make them a wilder place for wildlife, learning and wellbeing!
Wilding Schools is a 3-year project, working with 12 schools and colleges to restore nature and wildlife. Our students have spent this academic year learning about why biodiversity is important and why wilding in schools can help rebuild much-needed habitats across the UK.
Our team have travelled across the country from Plymouth to Newcastle, delivering assemblies, onboarding sessions and workshops alongside local Wildlife Trusts, providing expert advice to ensure that students make informed decisions about how to care for their local wildlife.
The students then took the project into their own hands, researching and writing up a Wilding Plan detailing the intended changes, how they would increase biodiversity, the equipment needed, and a strategic calendar of when changes would take place. Students considered the costs and labour involved in wilding their schools as well as the best season for different plants and habitats to be added.
Some of the schools have already started creating habitats, such as St Mary’s Catholic High School in Leyland. Mr Riley said, "We’ve had a brilliant start to the gardens being developed here at St Mary's with the Eco/Sustainability team fully embracing the change in our school and watching the growth of our flowers in their natural surroundings. We are looking forward to this developing even further and changing the landscape to our front entrance.”
Many schools have spent the term researching how to build a pond, wall garden, wildflower meadow or marshy area to attract more insects, birds and small mammals, before completing baseline surveys of the wildlife that already lives in their school using professional software like Seek by iNaturalist, Merlin Bird ID and insect FIT counts.
East Norfolk College have bought materials to install a large green wall including clematis, jasmines and ceanothus plants, which will complement their wildflower meadow to increase insect biodiversity in their school. They will be completing surveys in the autumn term to monitor the progress of their wilding project over the next couple of years. Dr Simon Fox, Deputy Principal at East Norfolk College, remarked that “The project so far has been really positive. It has been interesting to reflect on the limited diversity across the site, and the creative ways in which we will need to plan to introduce greater biodiversity given the little green space we have.”
What happens next is a fascinating adventure of preparing, planting, building, and completing surveys to see firsthand the impact of their habitat creation on local wildlife over the course of the next 2 years.
Shae Clements, Science Teacher at The King Alfred School, told us: "To think of the changes put in place just in our first 6 months is very satisfying. We have had the chance to establish no mow zones around school, put out camera traps, hedgehog houses, hedgehog tunnels, and more. It has also been a chance to utilise sampling techniques that link to the GCSE science curriculum.”
Each school’s Wilding Plan has been created to increase learning opportunities as well as student wellbeing. Students and teachers told us that they had learnt about gardening, ecosystems and food webs, and were excited for their new habitats to create opportunities for curriculum links not only to science and geography, but also PSHE, English, and Maths! For St Vincent’s School, we adapted our workshops towards students’ additional needs, using all senses to help them understand the natural world.
Furthermore, students have not only developed academic knowledge of the world but have gained transferable skills such as teamwork, research, evaluation, and project management, which will be invaluable for future employment.
We're so proud of the progress that our schools have already made, and we hope that the Wilding Schools project will inspire other schools and organisations to restore nature and create habitats in their outdoor spaces, across the UK.
The work of Green Schools Revolution: Wilding Schools is made possible by the generosity of the #iwill Fund, a joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which supports young people to access high quality social action opportunities.
