Colchester Prep & High School, Essex

Learn about how year 7 students at Colchester Prep & High School learnt to survive in the wild and to value the environment around them.

Educational Visits Coordinator, Chris Rayner, talked to us about helping students at Colchester Prep and High School connect with nature through educational visits.

Q: What are the highlights of your educational visits year so far?

My favourite has to be our bushcraft residential at Cuffley. It’s an immersive experience for our year 7 students, where they can connect with nature and learn outdoor skills. We run it at the beginning of term, about 2 weeks in, to help build relationships early on. It’s a really memorable experience for everyone and a great foundation for future outdoor experiences.

 Q: Why do you think it works so well?

The ancient woodland environment and the back to nature ethos of a Bushcraft Co residential are a powerful combination. We jump straight into fire skills training – they need to learn quickly as cooking lunch depends on being able to start a fire. Once the students realise that they have to depend on themselves, and each other, they throw themselves into the experience. They learn about sustainable forestry skills and use the resources around them to build shelters to sleep in overnight. About two thirds of our year 7s choose to sleep under the stars and some want to stay forever – that’s the power of connecting with nature!

Q. What are your objectives for the residential?

I want the students to come away from this with a sense of achievement and inner resilience. 99 per cent of the group have never experienced anything like this before so we’re asking a lot of them, but supporting them too. It’s amazing the difference you see in young people – the environment really brings them out of themselves.

As an EVC I want to build the foundations for future residential and adventurous activities. I’m responsible for our DofE scheme too and I think we’ll see more students taking on the challenge now they’ve got a taste for the wild.  In one case, a year 7 student was so inspired by their experience that they threw themselves into DofE – they’re in year 11 now and already completing their Gold Award. 

 Q: Is sustainability a priority for you when organising education visits?

It’s a balance with budgets and other priorities but we do what we can. In some areas we’re doing more on the school site, like English or language productions, which means less travel by coach.  Our curriculum visits have become much more localised and we run trips to sustainability projects like wind farms. On our Bushcraft residential we’re really focused on leaving no trace and there is a strict reusable policy too – it teaches the students to think about our impact on the environment and how to minimise it.

Read the full article and more in The EVC Magazine:

Chris Rayner is EVC and Head of Outdoor Learning and Global Enrichment at Colchester Prep and High School, an independent school in Colchester, Essex.

Be Inspired by more School Stories

Learn from other schools about how they are using educational visits to inspire young people to protect and promote the environment.

If you’ve got a school story to share with other EVCs and visit leaders, please get in touch and help us to celebrate educational visits.

Email marketing@evolveadvice.co.uk.