Great teaching in the great outdoors is being offered to a school near you!
Fresh from being awarded top marks for its outdoor education, WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre is offering disadvantaged schools in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire free school trips to connect children with nature.
Staff at the Centre were delighted when they learned following an inspection they had been re-awarded the Quality badge for Learning outside the Classroom (LOtC) this month.
The news comes as WWT has received further funds to enable kids to visit Slimbridge and other WWT centres around the UK.
Before the summer holidays Finlay Community School pupils from Gloucester were the first to come on a school trip to Slimbridge under the Scheme.
A total of £60,000 has now been raised since WWT launched the Inspiring Generations ‘Free School Visits’ fund last summer and sent out a rallying call to UK businesses to help end our children’s disconnection with nature.
Funds have come in from a number of UK businesses and organisations**, including SFIA Education Trust, Cargill and Western Power, plus several generous private donations from members of the public.
Elizabeth Connors, Cares Chairman at Cargill’s Meat Business, said: “As part of Cargill’s commitment to enrich the communities where we operate, we are delighted to support this scheme which will benefit so many disadvantaged schoolchildren in the Gloucester-Hereford region and which will help to improve these students’ understanding and enjoyment of the natural world.”
WWT was established as an education charity in 1946 and has welcomed more than two million children on school visits to its nine wetland centres across the UK. Sadly, research shows generation by generation we are spending less and less time with nature.
A recent survey found that less than a third of children had not been on a country walk in the past year and more than 20% had never visited a farm or climbed a tree: in fact more children are admitted to UK hospitals for injuries sustained falling out of bed that falling out of trees!
Supporting the initiative, David Lindo, the ‘Urban Birder’, who spoke at the Slimbridge Festival of Birds, earlier this year, said: “It is very important to excite children about nature. There are some children who haven’t even seen a cow before, or watched waves crashing on the shore – how can they go through life only seeing these things on television? It is so important to give children the opportunity to go out and see nature first hand. WWT are leaders in this field, and we should all follow their lead.”
WWT’s Chief Executive, Martin Spray said: “Nobody is going to protect the natural world unless they understand it and it is a sad fact that the majority of information children get about nature is through the television. Studies have shown that children from deprived areas are most likely to gain from the transformative impact of outdoor learning. We are aiming for 2.5 million school children to have visited WWT centres by 2016 to mark our celebration of 70 years of connecting young people with wetlands, wildlife and the environment around us.”
To help WWT meet that target, fundraising for the Inspiring Generations Free School Visits Scheme continues, so for more information or to make a donation, visit www.wwt.org.uk/inspire.
