All FSA Members have been emailed the following concerning on-line Forest School Training. Emails sometimes end up in ‘spam’ folders so do please check there first if you have not received it. Also, we are unable to send group emails to role based email address such as ‘admin’, ‘webmaster’, ‘info’ etc. If you are not receiving emails for this reason perhaps you can use an alternative (change within your account settings).

Dear FSA members,

The FSA board have been made aware that some Forest School Trainers are starting to offer purely on-line Forest School Training. Several members have expressed their concern about this to the board.

The FSA has a Forest School Trainers Quality Assurance scheme through which Trainers may receive professional endorsement. A trainer delivering purely on-line Forest School training would not meet the criteria required under this scheme.

The board are concerned about the possible impact of these on-line courses on the quality of Forest School provision. We must decide whether or not to accept purely on-line delivered Level 3 Forest School qualifications for the ‘FSA Recognised Forest School Provider Scheme’.

The FSA believes that Forest School training should reflect the Forest School principles. In particular:

• Contact with a woodland or natural wooded environment to support the development of a relationship between learner and the natural world.  This promotes a deeper nature connection and this aspect has recently been strengthened in the new Forest School qualifications regarding well-being.
• Offering learners opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the FS environment and themselves
• Creating a community for learning and development and learning.

The directors are writing to all FSA members to survey your views and to inform the decision. They would be grateful if you could spend just one minute to complete the short on-line survey found through the link below. We hope to get the results out before Christmas.

TAKE THE SURVEY

Thank you,

The FSA Board