Welsh teachers urged to grab opportunity for environmental education

The Field Studies Council, the UK’s leading outdoor education charity, has called upon teachers to embrace the opportunities offered by the new Curriculum for Wales which will be introduced from September 2025.

The charity’s education manager Jo Harris, speaking at the National Education Show in Cardiff, said: “The Curriculum for Wales is an unmissable opportunity to embed outdoor education as an integral part of the learning experience.

“We have been banging the drum for meaningful, enriching and immersive experiences for all students since the conception of the Field Studies Council in 1943, and we know the impact and importance of real-world learning for students of all ages, backgrounds and abilities.

“I urge teachers to embrace outdoor learning as an integral part of the new curriculum as it aims to create the healthy and ambitious young people needed to move our society ahead.”

The new curriculum for Wales has a strong emphasis on four key purposes, with the formal boundaries between subjects becoming more fluid in a more holistic approach to encourage positive well-being. The four purposes aim to create:

• ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn throughout their lives
• enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work
• ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world
• healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society

The first cohort of Year 10 GCSE students will start following the new curriculum from September 2025, and Jo urged teachers to embed field trips and outdoor learning into their planning from the start.

She said: “We know that experience-based hands-on learning in natural environments fosters problem-solving, critical thinking and resilience. It encourages curiosity and a deep connection with the natural world, essential attributes for the citizens of tomorrow.

“The world of outdoor learning and nature connection is vital in creative thinking and the investigative work involved in fieldwork creates critical thinkers who can work in teams and individually.

“With green jobs on the rise at a rate much higher than workers with green skills, (World Economic Forum, Feb 2024), the future work force needs the stimulation, engagement and support to fulfil these roles, and the new Welsh curriculum is committed to delivering on this.

“Field Studies Council is a key partner of choice for this commitment - our school and university courses, as well as our online biodiversity department, are delivering expert courses and resources around biodiversity and environmental learning.”

The Welsh Assembly Government has told schools that the new curriculum should make sure 14 to 16-year-olds get an appropriate mix of general, vocational and skill-based qualifications and that curriculum time helps learners to understand all of their strengths.

Jo added: “We all know the physical health benefits of being outside and being active and we are becoming ever more knowledgeable about outdoor learning’s impact on mental health well-being, confidence and resilience.

“The students who struggle more to concentrate in class, those that might not get the chance to relax in nature otherwise or those that suddenly blossom to life in front of your eyes when given a pond dipping net, these are the beneficiaries of the drive for more outdoor learning across the curriculum.

“As educators in Wales, developing the curriculum for and with your schools, you can look to outdoor learning and its benefits to help deliver these purposes. We have courses to support all learners across many subjects, and I’m happy to engage with teachers to explain how you can use outdoor environmental learning to reap the benefits for your pupils.”

With centres at Rhyd-y-Creuau in the Yr Wyddfa National Park, Dale Fort in Pembrokeshire and Margam Discovery Centre in Port Talbot, the charity is already playing a key role in helping educators to deliver and plan high-quality, engaging experiences that meet the demands of the new curriculum.

It is currently working with subject advisers at WJEC – Wales' largest awarding body – to pinpoint how its geography fieldwork courses can help prepare students to understand the six stages of enquiry and complete high quality non-examined assessments, which will be new for GCSE students next year.

It is also working with WJEC to help build teacher-confidence in delivering fieldwork for the new GCSE.

For more information visit https://www.field-studies-council.org/