Celebrating another incredible year of outdoor learning!
Published 17/09/24
Our Outdoor Learning Team are celebrating another successful academic year of delivering engaging and important educational experiences to the students of Milton Keynes – and topping it all off with an Environmental and Sustainability award from the Milton Keynes Education Awards!
Since last September, our team have delivered over 500 activities for more than 15,000 primary and secondary school students in the city. Some schools have engaged with our staff through assemblies and careers events, others have visited their local parks to discover more about its wildlife, geography and history. Some of our most popular sessions this year have been “River Explorers”, “Team Challenges & Survival Skills” and “Marvellous Minibeasts”, but we also offer activities on topics such as wellbeing, hibernation, public art and ecological surveying techniques.
We have also worked with groups to plant trees, create habitats for wildlife, sow wildflower seeds, clean up litter and generally improve the natural health and biodiversity of our city. We cannot thank these students enough for making a measurable difference for wildlife.
The team have had a strong focus this year on engaging with schools in the more deprived areas of our city, and particularly schools with a high rate of students registering for free school meals. This has been in response to the continuing Cost of Living Crisis. It has been our aim to offer a limited amount of free activities to qualifying school so that no student should ever be deprived of access to the natural world. This scheme has enabled us to bring 240 students out into the parks of Milton Keynes this year, and we look forward to continuing to work with these groups and offer more funding to others in the next twelve months.
Finally, we wanted to finish up by thanking our team of dedicated volunteers, without whom, much of our work would not be possible. They have contributed an incredible 400+ hours helping us to engage with school groups from all over MK since September 2023. This group of incredible people represent a huge variety of walks of life and backgrounds, and their devotion to their role is beyond outstanding. We are forever grateful for their tireless support and enthusiasm, rain or shine (and hail, lightening or snow!).
Get your school involved in outdoor learning this academic year with our range of school sessions and free Junior Park Rangers programme.