St. Michael’s School, Green Lane, Bolton 15th November 2020
It has been announced that a new GCSE in natural history is to be launched in 2022. Brilliant news, but one commentator claimed that it kids would choose it as an easy option as all it would involve would be going out and walking around fields. They need a proper science like geography. Hmmm…..
Any GSCE that would need to cover, at the very least, biology, ecology, geology, geography and human impacts on the environment is not an easy option, it is a multi-disciplinary science. Any one who has done an Environmental Science degree will tell you just how complex natural environments and our relationship with them are. So, thumbs up to the kids who will take up this challenge for a better planet. Having said that, many schools in Bolton have already embraced nature within their curriculum.
St Michael’s School, Green Lane, Bolton first started to develop their outdoor classroom before the term existed, in those days they were just called school gardens. In 1990 the school asked the newly formed Bolton Wildlife Project for help with designs and costings to improve their grounds. In 2000 extensive boardwalks and ponds were installed in joint tasks by The Wildlife Trust and Bolton Conservation Volunteers. BCV returned in 2014 to restore the pond and some of the boardwalks. In 2016 the school won a Platinum Green Tree School Award from the Woodland Trust after pupils planted hundreds of trees throughout the grounds. Which brings us to November 2020 and BCV have returned again to do a bit of a tidy up.
Over the course of the lockdowns outdoor classrooms have suffered from lack of maintenance. On today’s task one of the boardwalks had netting nailed into place to prevent slipping on the wet and slippery wood, and the pond was dredged of leaves. Part of the boardwalk was so unsafe it needed to be replaced, but that’s for another time. The biggest problem on today’s task was working in such a confined area, everybody who could wear a mask wore one, with exceptions on medical grounds. Still, the job got done and there’s plenty more left to do here and at other schools.
