Nature belongs at the heart of school life

History, Edmund Burke wrote, is ‘a pact between the dead, the living and the yet unborn.’ Nowhere is this pact more important than in our relationship with nature.

Conservative governments have always sought to protect and enhance the natural environment – whether through Disraeli’s Public Health Act, which sought to limit the environmental impact of the industrial revolution; or Eden’s Clean Air Act, which helped lift the London smog.  We shouldn’t forget it was Margaret Thatcher’s drive to cut sulphur emissions that stopped the acid rain which was damaging our woodlands and killing the fish in our lakes and rivers.

It’s not just a safe and secure environment we are obliged to bequeath our children – but a love of nature, an appreciation of natural history, and an awareness of how human behaviour affects the world around us.

Last autumn, I visited Holme Grange preparatory school in Berkshire.  Holme Grange is a successful independent school with a difference – the ‘forest school’.