We were recently invited to an event hosted by corporate member, Cambridge University Press and Assessment (CUPA) at their fabulous site – I regressed to school days and by the end of it was calling everyone Sir or Miss.

‘Bringing nature into the classroom’ was run as part of the work being done by CUPA to introduce a nature-related GCSE. It was one of a series of opportunities to hear from students about their experience of being outdoors and their understanding of the challenges being faced by wildlife and its habitats.

Listening to, and spending time with, young people is one of the many things that WTBCN has in common with CUPA.

Then the fun bit began as we joined the tables of students - there were exercises to feedback on a variety of questions, such as sharing memories of being outdoors and interacting with nature and why that matters, plus a make your own seed pot out of a sheet of newspaper activity.

The striking thing from the feedback questions was that all the memories of wildlife-related activities were from primary school, with virtually nothing taking place since secondary school. Arguably this is when you are most in need of the mental health benefit of being out in nature, with all the stresses of GCSE’s and societal pressures. It’s a trend that worries many organisations working with children, including Save the Children, whose study in 2022 found that:

“Just 27% of children said they regularly play outside their homes, compared to 71% of the baby boomer generation. For those aged specifically between 55 - 64, it was 80% showing that rates of play have declined steadily in just a few generations.”