School Engagement

Objectives

We aim to teach children about their local environment with a focus on aquatic habitats, issues around biodiversity, hydrology and water quality. Both science and geography have been taught. This has included bespoke walking tours to local water courses from the school gate; GCSE river fieldwork at Combe Mill; and A Level catchment tours focused on hydrology and flood mitigation. There has also been PGCE teacher training.

Many of the pupils experienced wading in rivers for the first time, a profound sensory connection to the aquatic environment which they were highly unlikely to experience outside our project. By allowing children to gain confidence in outdoor environments close to where they live, our belief is that they will come to love them, introducing family members and friends so the project will be truly wide-reaching and multi-generational. Children who love these environments are likely to go on to seek to protect them and maybe work in environmental careers as adults.

“The students were so very well engaged. You pitched everything carefully and correctly… It is not often I get the opportunity to work with an organisation or individuals who are able to tune into our special students so instinctively and naturally.”

Feedback from LVS Oxford

Lessons learnt

Everything comes down to staffing the visits, as well as the willingness and dynamic planning ability to go the extra mile for children with special needs and access requirements. These trips often require a lot more visit planning.

Flooding and pollution has increasingly been an issue for our visits. We have come up with creative solutions including scheduling multiple locations, getting more waders, having equipment to model river surveying when the river is inaccessible, and checking recent sewage discharge data.

Demand is enormous. Working with the volunteer Cotswold Wardens has allowed us to increase staff ratios and bring out whole year groups at a time, keeping the cost for individual pupils affordable.

Funding

Total cost: £50,000 p.a.*

Funded by Thames Water.

*This estimate does not take into account the substantial amount of time that our partners at Cotwolds National Landscape put into building relationships with partners and stakeholders to enable successful session delivery.