Exciting progress of the Nature Premium Campaign

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By Dr Sara A Collins, Nature Premium campaign Co-Founder and Lead Hypha

We feel hope and optimism that positive change is possible. We set up the Nature Premium Campaign during Lockdown 1 when we were worrying about the children we worked with and their lack of access to nature. In 2020 we were told that the Department for Education (DforE) accepted that time in nature supported children and young people’s mental wellbeing, but there was 'no money and no political will'.

So over the last four years we have worked on our proposal asking the government to guarantee regular and ongoing nature experiences for all children and young people (C&YP) with additional funding for those who need it most. We understand that in some way the ‘System’ either tests your proposal or makes you give up and that being tested makes the proposal stronger, and that is no bad thing. Our proposal is stronger because we keep asking critical friends how we might improve it, including teachers, headteachers, academics, and outdoor education sector specialists, in fact anyone who will listen.

While working on our proposal we kept thinking that there is a key question, why wouldn’t you value giving children regular nature experiences? Why doesn’t everyone see this as a priority? We often compare our own childhoods with that of today’s generation. It’s easy to look back with ‘rose-tinted glasses’ and assume that everyone had the same experiences as we did. For example, I grew up in a semi-rural area with parents who encouraged my interest in nature and who sent us outside to play until we were ready for tea. We look at the stark difference with the experiences of today’s generation and wonder what happened to change things so fundamentally. 

The truth is that it’s not down to an ‘event’. Each generation has become more urban, with aspirations to be ‘modern’ and engage with the advantages that technology and globalisation provide. The result is that we increasingly cannot assume that children will have contact with and develop a knowledge of nature. This came home to me when I had a discussion with a bright Year 6 girl who could give me the definition of a mammal but completely denied that she was an animal. I retold this to an 89 year old retired GP friend whose response was ‘well not animals as such, higher animals’. It seems that there is a disconnect between our theoretical experience of nature and our actual physical experience of nature. Part of our challenge is to develop the argument that as ‘animals’ we need to be in nature and should not live in a hygienic, sterile environment that the urban home provides.

I imagine that being a policy official is a difficult job. It is easier to analyse data looking at economic units or demographics by area, age, or income. Our challenge is to consider children as less potential factory workers and more as individual animals that need to be provided with the environment, stimulus and food so that they thrive and develop their full potential. Remember the old campaigns that protested against animals being caged so that they could not move. Remember zoo animals swaying from side to side because their enclosure had resulted in psychological damage? Why is it OK to keep children inside, often in hot stuffy classrooms and insist that they sit still? Decision makers have forgotten that we have always been animals and learnt in nature and learning from a screen is a very new approach, relatively speaking. We have the almost comical demands to prove categorically that time in nature is a benefit to children. You could argue that the current education system is not working for our young people when you see the level of absenteeism, poor mental health, lack of social mobility, I could go on.

Imagine the advantages a young person starting work would have from regular nature experiences throughout their education? Apart from improving their engagement with education it would include an understanding of how to:

• manage their own mental wellbeing and reduce obesity.
• develop agency to address the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis.
• respect the countryside and keep themselves safe.
• value land-based careers and aspire to follow one.
• value food production and a healthy diet.

If you need convincing about the benefit of learning in nature please watch this one minute film about transformative nature. People often ask what will be dropped if children spend time in nature so we created another one minute film to answer the question. It’s not unreasonable to say that all knowledge comes from nature.

So why do we feel hope and optimism? It’s because the new MPs at the Department for Education do understand the benefit of regular nature experiences for all children. There is still a challenge requiring an evidence informed proposal but now we know that there are open minds for the right solution to improve mental wellbeing, attendance and behaviour in education settings. We now have to deliver funding possibilities, the good news is that we are planning a webinar hosted by the Environment Funders Network in February and have been invited to become an Environment Partner of 1% for the Planet. We are proposing a blended funding coalition that would deliver the Nature Premium to all children and young people in England. So there is political will for a solution to education issues and there is the possibility of funding.

There is a saying that ‘the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time is today’. Considering the life experiences of this generation of children the best time to have taught them about nature was 20 years ago and the Nature Premium could teach them about nature today.

If you would like to support our campaign, help or comment on our proposal please contact Sara Collins

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