Educating Teenagers for Nature Recovery
Summary
This research focus looks at how to engage secondary schools and teenagers with nature. The initial project was funding by the HERO project at the Oxford Martin School. We worked with 30 teachers and nature educators to agree on a set of principles for a practical and effective approach nature education in secondary schools.
Why teenagers?
If UK nature recovery schemes are to succeed, we need young people on board. Why?
Today’s teenagers are already hugely influential: economically, through their purchasing decisions, and via their influence on their adults.
The decisions they will be making very soon, in their workplaces and in their personal lives, will be informed by the values, ideas, attitudes and priorities they are absorbing now.
With the change in the voting age to 16, the majority of the 4.6 million young people in UK secondary schools today will be eligible to vote in the next general election.
Teenagers are at a sweet spot of human development: with a growing understanding of the world, but not yet settled in their opinions; they have high levels of energy and mental capacity, learn quickly, develop new interests, understand issues and context, and develop passions for things they care about. The youth climate marches show how youth passion can take off; igniting a passion for nature is also possible.
Why now?
There is growing recognition in nature organisations, in government, in education, and in wider society, that secondary school students are an important audience for nature education. And change is beginning to happen:
The UK Government Department of Education’s National Education Nature Park is being rolled out, encouraging all schools to improve their sites for biodiversity and use them for education and wellbeing. The uptake has been strong. In Oxfordshire, 18 of the 85 secondary schools (state and private) are registered (21%), and 6 of these have mapped their sites for biodiversity and uploaded their data to the NENP website (7% of the total). (While there are more primary schools registered (22), this is a much smaller proportion (8%) of the 262 primary schools in Oxfordshire. This needs further investigation to understand why.)
In 2025, following a review of the entire school curriculum, the Labour government reconfirmed its commitment to a new GCSE in Natural History. This was the culmination of a long campaign which had garnered widespread enthusiasm for this GCSE. While it has taken over a decade to get this far from the first proposal, and the road to launching a new GCSE is long (first teaching will not be until 2029 or even 2030), from what we see in Oxfordshire, the very fact that it has been mooted and now confirmed, has changed the conversation. Yes, it might be a challenge to implement, it might be that the subject should just be covered in Biology, it’s not clear where it fits within the overall curriculum or who will teach it, but now Natural History is a legitimate subject for teenagers to study at school.
And while we wait and prepare for the GCSE, there is a growing recognition of a more urgent set of “business drivers” for secondary schools to engage with nature in their grounds, and nature education. Student mental health problems, student stress, student absence, teacher absenteeism and retention, attainment inequality, parent stress, and even excess building heat and outdoor heat in the summer – are all becoming overwhelming challenges for school leaders that can be helped by nature. Research is showing that time in nature is good for wellbeing, and some schools are experimenting with how they can use green spaces in their grounds to support students and staff, and build stronger relationships within the whole school community, with promising early results.
Our HERO funded project was to pool the expertise of teachers who are attempting to use nature in schools for education and wellbeing, and professional nature educators working in non-school settings, to answer the question:
How can nature education in secondary schools be encouraged?
This project has aimed to support the expansion of nature recovery into schools: into school grounds, and into education. We have worked with a group of around 30 teachers, nature educators and researchers in Oxfordshire to co-create a set of guidelines, or principles, for effective nature education in UK secondary schools. These are intended to help teachers and schools take advantage of cited opportunities: for wellbeing, skills development, brain development, alternative settings for learning, community building, and related benefits.
Follow on projects
Our intention is to look for funding to expand this work to explore further the practicalities and potential of engaging teenagers with nature. For updates after 1st Jan 2026 please visit our new website here
