Persuading a Principal to Allow Outdoor Learning

Understand what they are protecting

A principal is holding risk, timetable, parent complaints, staff workload and inspection. Outdoor learning threatens four of those and helps none of them, from where they are sitting.

Your job is to reduce their risk, not to argue for the value of nature. They probably already agree with you about nature.

Ask for something small and specific

Not permission for outdoor learning. Permission to use the strip beside the car park on Tuesday mornings with my class for one term.

A small specific ask can be said yes to. A big vague one has to be thought about, and thinking about it is how it dies.

Bring the curriculum mapping, not the philosophy

Show which learning areas each session covers. In Singapore that means the NEL areas. Elsewhere, whatever framework the school is judged against. A principal who can defend it in those terms will approve it.

Answer the risk question before it is asked

Bring a one page risk note. Heat and timing, water, sun, plants on site to avoid, what happens if it rains, ratios. Doing this unprompted signals that you are not going to create a problem, and that is what they are actually assessing.

Make it cost nothing

No budget request in the first term. Containers, cuttings and donated soil. A proposal with a price on it goes into a different and much slower process.

Then produce evidence

At the end of the term, bring the children's recording sheets and one photograph. Not a report. The sheets.

That is what gets you the second term, the budget, and eventually the rest of the school.