Schools, colleges and education providers have a key role to play in recovering nature. Managing your grounds to boost wildlife and strengthen pupils' connection to nature can support a range of existing educational priorities while contributing to nature recovery across Suffolk and Norfolk.

Research shows that access to nature and regular outdoor learning can improve wellbeing, concentration, engagement and physical activity. Nature-rich grounds can provide valuable opportunities for curriculum delivery, enrichment, personal development and climate education.

Nature-based improvements can also help education settings become more resilient to climate change. Trees, wildflower areas, ponds and other habitats can provide shade during hot weather, improve water management during periods of heavy rainfall, support biodiversity and create more enjoyable outdoor spaces for learning and recreation.

Taking part in nature recovery activities can help pupils develop environmental knowledge, practical skills and a sense of stewardship for their local area, while contributing to wider school priorities including Climate Action Plans, sustainability leadership and community engagement.

What the Local Nature Recovery Strategy is

The Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs) are guides that can help you make more and better-quality spaces for nature. The strategies emphasise the importance of nature for decarbonisation, climate adaptation and resilience, and highlight the opportunities nature can provide for education, learning ‘green’ skills and health and wellbeing.

The LNRSs are made up of two components:

How the Local Nature Recovery Strategy can help you

Climate Action Plans

The Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs) can help with creating your Climate Action Plans (CAP). The environmental and social benefits of nature recovery mean the LNRSs can help you achieve all four pillars.

Enhancing biodiversity on schoolgrounds and in the surrounding area and connecting pupils with nature

LNRS action suggestion: create wildflower areas and ponds. Plant hedgerows and trees. Bringing more nature onto your site can help with creating more comfortable outdoor learning spaces. If you don’t have space within your grounds, look for spaces and initiatives in the local community pupils could get involved with.
Reducing emissions from school buildings, the supply chain and promoting sustainable practices in the community.

LNRS action suggestion: plant native trees and hedgerows to capture carbon, reduce the frequency grass is mowed.
Equipping pupils with the skills and knowledge for careers in the ‘green skills sector’.

LNRS action suggestion: Involve pupils in biodiversity baseline surveys, habitat design, and ongoing monitoring.
Ensuring physical infrastructure, school grounds and service delivery is resilient to heatwaves, flooding, and extreme weather

LNRS action suggestion: Use nature to reduce the impacts of extreme weather such as:
- Planting trees to provide shade and cooling during heatwaves
- Installing rain gardens for natural flood management

Enrichment offer

The Government’s Enrichment Framework specifies schools’ enrichment offers should include opportunities for students to engage in nature, outdoors and adventure activities.

Embedding nature recovery into your school and involving students in activities can strengthen your school’s enrichment offer by providing meaningful opportunities for civic engagement, outdoor learning, environmental stewardship and personal development.

Nature as safeguarding

As part of a broader safeguarding, wellbeing and Climate Action Plan approach, schools can use nature recovery and improved access to green spaces to create environments in which children feel safe, connected and supported.

Nature-rich environments can support physical and mental health, strengthen social connections, foster a sense of belonging and support engagement with learning.

Access to green spaces and outdoor learning provides valuable opportunities for physical activity, play, reflection and sensory regulation. This may be particular beneficial for pupils experiencing stress, anxiety or other vulnerabilities.

How to create space for nature

Whether your school is in the middle of a town, very rural or somewhere in between, there’ll be actions you can take to support nature. Habitats including trees, hedges, ponds, grassland and wildflower areas might already be on your site, or there could be space to create them. If your school grounds are limited, there’ll be spaces in your neighbouring community you can get involved with.

Education Nature Park has fantastic resources for all ages of learners taking you through the whole process from exploring your site and what is nearby to recording the changes you make.

- Look on the LNRS map to see if there is anything on or near your site that is already great for wildlife. We’ve named these ‘APIB: Areas of Particular Importance for Biodiversity’ and these include scientifically protected places and nature reserves.
- Education Nature Park’s guides and activities for completing step 1.
- Check the LNRS map to see if there are any recommended actions for your school ground. These are called ‘Potential Habitat Measures’ on the map layers. You can search the map by area, habitats and species.
- If there is nothing recommended, take a look at the ‘unmapped measures’ (these are actions that can be taken anywhere) and see if any work for you. You can also look at what exists and is recommended near your site and try to replicate these to create corridors that join up spaces.
- To get an overall view of your local area (and to see the information in graphs and charts rather than a map), you can use the dashboards. This allows you to filter the information to your ward, parish, district or catchment.
- Education Nature Park’s guides and activities for completing step 2.
- When deciding what you want to do, look at ‘Part C’ of the LNRS strategy document for detailed information about the specific things you can do to help different spaces, animals and plants.
- Education Nature Park resources and activities for step 3.
- Whether on your site or out in the local community, this step is all about children and young people putting their plan into action and spreading the word about what they are up to.
- Education Nature Park resources and activities for step 4.
Now you’ve taken action, it’s time to share what you’ve done. We are creating a map of all the nature recovery work happening across Suffolk and Norfolk. Anything that you upload to Education Nature Park will be shared with us so we can add it to the map. You only need to upload your data to Education Nature Park, you don’t need to send it to us as well.

Education Nature Park resources and activities for step 5.

Priority species and habitats

The LNRS has identified animals, plants and spaces which need extra help.

When recording species on iNaturalist, take a look at the LNRS key species and see if there’s any overlap. Or use the map to see if there are any species-specific actions you can take on your site.

Resources and support

If you are interested in learning about how to manage school grounds for biodiversity, check out this free course.

Schools can access free support from Climate Ambassadors, a DfE-funded programme that helps education settings develop and implement Climate Action Plans, including biodiversity, adaptation and resilience projects linked to local priorities.

Norfolk Wildlife Trust has produced a Wilder School’s toolkit, full of resources. The toolkit provides straightforward ideas, activity plans, and information to support schools and other settings in implementing changes to benefit children and wildlife in their grounds.

Education user guide (LNRS)