What is Forest School?
The main focus of UK-China Education is to expand the ethos and aims of the Forest School system. Forest School is now widely accepted in the UK since 1993, when it was inspired by the Danish education system. The main ethos of forest school is to improve children’s self-esteem and scholastic aptitude. The program’s overwhelming success is based on strong empirical correlations between high self-confidence and improved performance in school.
The Forest School ethos is largely based on the importance of unique learning styles represented by schemas and other human development techniques. This approach to education has been developed by many notable educational theorists, developmental psychologists and scientific pedologists such as Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. The successes of Forest School, and the research upon which it is based, demonstrates that by adopting independent and child lead learning, children are able to obtain a much more successful learning experience than one that is more forced and teacher lead. Thus these ethoi encourage an outdoor natural learning environment, a place that practices multi-sensory activities and where all learning styles and schemas can be utilized.