Forest School and the outdoor learning provision at Pinvin Academy are a pupil-centred inspirational learning process, offering opportunities for holistic , personal and spiritual growth. Accessed by every child in the Academy, every week, it supports play, exploration and personal enquiry and self-development. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting. 

Forest School at Pinvin is not a lesson, not a didactic process with a pre-determined outcome.  Each session and the activities themselves facilitate more than knowledge-gathering, they help the children to develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually. Because it is rooted in nature, through exploration, questioning and a supportive atmosphere, the practice creates a safe, non-judgemental, nurturing environment and inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how an individual fits within it.  Each session begins and ends with a reflective time, where each participant will sit, or stand, listen, or look, focusing on the moment – one direction is given for this time – ‘just be still, and listen for things that are not you.’   

Forest School provides opportunities for participants to build skills in communication, negotiation, collaboration, resilience, finding creative solutions, reading social cues and empathy; all essential for healthy social development.  There are countless pieces of research that uphold these principles, and which support the need for a holistic approach to growth – one model supposes that a child is like a cake  - if you gather all of the correct ingredients but don’t allow them to mix, you have an idea of a standard school curriculum: during a Forest School session, or indeed over the course of sometimes an entire year of such sessions, you allow the ingredients to blend together and you end up with the whole cake – the Child. 

We have seen children at their happiest during Forest School; children who struggle inside the classroom – they are allowed to find their own way through situations, they are allowed to revel in and grow in their understanding of their stewardship of the World, they are allowed to find the ‘wow’ in their experiences – and they flourish as a result.