'It's given the children a love of wildlife': the schools letting nature in

In school fields and communities, pupils are learning about the fragility of nature – and restoring depleted environments

Emma Sheppard

Sat 17 Feb 2018 09.00 GMTLast modified on Sat 17 Feb 2018 12.13 GMT

After the long slog of winter, pupils at Evelyn Community primary school in Merseyside are getting outside with a mission in mind: to count and record the number of different bird species in the school grounds. The challenge is part of the Big School’s Bird Watch, an event which last year involved 73,000 school children and their teachers.

But the children have been taking an active interest in the wildlife at their school for a while. Since creating a garden in an unused corner of their field more than two years ago, the pupils have attracted a variety of birds. They’ve planted wildflower seeds, created a vegetable plot, made bird nests, and learned about biodiversity. The school has a wicker bird hide and has bought binoculars to encourage bird spotting all year round.

The school’s headteacher, Carole Arnold, says the impact of the children’s work on biodiversity in the garden has been significant. A group of 12 children spend time in the garden each week, for a full term, before giving a new group their turn. “Our school field had absolutely no birds at all [before]. It’s really given the children a love of wildlife,” she says. “We use it with some vulnerable children as well who sometimes need help to be calm.”

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Creating a buzz: how UK schools are embracing beekeeping

Teachers are discovering that beehives can provide exciting opportunities to learn outside the classroom

Zofia Niemtus

Friday 3 March 2017 15.20 GMT Last modified on Friday 3 March 2017 16.32 GMT 

We know that things are bad with bees right now. In the past decade, they have been disappearing at an alarming rate – a combination of pests, pesticides and the destruction of habitats has seen the UK population decrease by about a third over that period. In September, the US added seven types of bees to its list of endangered species for the first time. The consequences of losing them would be huge: Albert Einstein once said that humans “would not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years”.

Help is taking all kinds of forms: from fundraising gigs to experimental robotic pollinators and Tesco donating waste sugar to keep Cornish hives going through the winter.

When it comes to schools, it would be understandable for the approach to be theoretical rather than practical (anyone who has ever shared a classroom with a bee and a set of panicking students will understand why). But there are schools across the country taking a practical approach and getting involved in beekeeping, rather than just reading about it.

Dr Julia Hoggard has kept bees for 30 years and runs a 20-acre, bee-orientated nature reserve in Cumbria. For the past year, she has been working with a local primary school, helping the students to create their own hives.

“I remember lots and lots of bees being in hay meadows when I was a child,” she says. “Whereas we will have summers now where we don’t see that many, even on the bee reserve. The change is painfully obvious. 

“The advantage of having them in schools is that they are neat little communities; you can look at every single aspect of what is going on and link it into the curriculum at all key stages.”

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Fish lose their unique personalities when they join a school

September 19, 2016

by Brett Smith

Researchers have found sticklebacks-- small freshwater fish native to the United Kingdom, appear to suppress their individuality when schooling, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances.

The study team found the bravest fish led groups, and the fish stuck together when facing a risky decision, just like the tendencies seen in human decision making. However, the team found the group's consensus appeared to override the direction of the leading fish, meaning these fish lost their personalities in a group setting.

"This is the first time that the suppression of personality in groups has been linked to its underlying cause, which is conformity in group decision making,” study author Christos Ioannou, a biologist from the University of Bristol in the UK, said in a news release.
What makes up a fishy personality?

In the study, the researchers assessed personality factors with a basic foraging test. First, a fish was put into an aquarium with a hiding place. Across from the hiding place was a food reward the fish had to cross open water to get. The team assessed boldness by documenting the length of time it took fish to go out of their sanctuary and get the food.

Then, the fish were tested again as a group. The school was seen making the decision collectively and even the most anxious individuals would swim in the direction of the food reward with their colleagues. The study team said while the boldest fish tended to lead the school, even the boldest fish stuck with the group to a certain extent, making them “less brave” than in the individual trials.

Follow-up tests revealed behavior previously seen in the group did not have a lasting effect when individuals were tested again by themselves; it was as if the group trials never occurred.

 

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Born Free's Virginia McKenna calls for conservation lessons in schools

'We are messing up the world and it's a catastrophe,' says wildlife campaigner Virginia McKenna, in call for school lessons on conservation

By Martin Chilton, Culture Editor online

7:45AM BST 29 May 2015

Virginia McKenna, the star of Born Free, called for conservation to be a fixed subject on the UK school curriculum, in order to address the "catastrophic mess the world is in".

The 83-year-old actress, who played conservationist Joy Adamson in the Oscar-winning 1966 film, was speaking to The Telegraph before her event at the Hay Festival. She said: "Our world has never been more of a mess than it is right now; it's a landscape of disaster. We need our children to be taught conservation because otherwise they will be disastrously equipped for the grim future we face. We need this to start at a young age, when they are still at nursery school and primary school, where they can learn about the world in a natural, attractive way."

London-born McKenna, who won a best actress BAFTA at the age of 25 for her part in the 1956 film A Town Like Alice, launched the Born Free Foundation in 1991 with her late actor husband Bill Travers. Born Free is an international conservation and animal rights organisation, based in the UK, focusing on wild animals. McKenna added: "There is a Born Free poster campaign at the moment saying 'There's no point in saving the last Rhino'. In the past five years in Mozambique the elephant population has fallen from 20,000 to 10,000. One elephant is killed every 15 minutes. There will be soon none left.

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