England's forests: Volunteering in your local woodlands

Volunteers and local communities are the life blood of our forests. Some of the remarkable projects initiated at Forestry Commission sites in the past few years – from the reopening of the 16-mile Blue Man Walk through the forests of Dalby, Broxa and Langdale, to the inspiring Cannock Chase Route To Health – have been the direct outcome of partnerships between the commission, the local?authority and members of the?public.

Following in the footsteps of medieval rabbit keepers? "Greening" walls? Designing and building your own forest benches? Getting involved in the forest can take many shapes and forms.

Most volunteering programmes are directed at local communities: "It's important to us that local people feel it's their forest, here for them," says the Forestry Commission's Frances Evershed at Thetford Forest in Norfolk. "They can contribute so much, and?the more they are involved, the?healthier the forest itself."

Local support might take the form of a "friends of" group, such as the Friends of Dalby Forest, which raises money and has regular volunteer days. At Dalby, volunteers have repainted bird hides and installed willow tunnels. In May they spent a day cutting back vegetation as part of a project to restore the Blue Man Walk across the North Yorkshire moors between Reasty Bank and Allerston.

The areas where volunteers can get involved range from archaeology through mountain-bike trail-building to conservation. In Thetford there is a long-running project to recover as much as possible of the medieval warren lodges; these were the homes in which so-called warreners lived as they carried out their daily work of protecting nearby rabbit warrens.

"You've got to imagine in those?days, with no supermarket up?the?road, rabbits would have been such a valuable product," Frances explains.

There are plenty of projects that would be delighted to welcome another pair of hands on their volunteer days. If mountain biking is your thing and you fancy having a go at helping to build a course, then you might want to contact the?Hamsterley Trailblazers in County Durham. This local group was formed with the purpose of making Hamsterley "a magnet for MTB riders of all abilities"; members meet at least once a month to improve old trails and plan new ones.

If you're more interested in conservation, then the Woodland Workout in Lincolnshire may be for you. It involves activities such as restoring heathland, burning brash – cuttings left over from wood management – digging ditches, path widening, coppicing, scrub clearance, fence removal and pond maintenance. Volunteers meet in Osgodby Wood near Market Rasen and at Great West Wood near Wragby a few times a month.

Other volunteer-focused projects?have explored the link between the forests and our mental wellbeing. To develop the Route To Health at Cannock Chase, the Forestry Commission collaborated with the local district council and primary care trust. Participants included members of a local youth group which was targeted at children excluded from school, residents from an adult mental-health rehab centre, and a young offenders group.

They designed and built their own artworks along a one-mile community arts trail. Several groups were asked to design benches so that the trail could be accessible for as many people as possible. The hard work put in by these volunteers has resulted in a tenfold increase in visitors to the area since the project began.

Get people into the forest, and it?will begin to work its magic. That's the philosophy.

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A degree too close to home? Call for price cut if students go local

The commission, set up by the Institute for Public Policy Research, argues that the discounted degrees would save the Government ￡10,000 per student in maintenance loans. The measure would also help keep up student numbers as universities grapple with further cuts in spending.

The plan is to be put forward by the commission – dominated by vice-chancellors – to spare universities from what they believe will be an “avalanche of austerity” once details of the Government’s comprehensive spending review are published.

Their document envisages that the cheap degrees will be offered only to those who live at home or work part-time, and will be given on the understanding that those who receive them will not be entitled to maintenance grants to meet accommodation costs.

Nigel Thrift, the vice-chancellor of Warwick University and the chairman of the commission, said: “Higher education has to play its part and find its fair share of deficit reduction but we should not let the work universities and colleges do in driving economic prosperity be swept away by an avalanche of austerity.

“We are going to make major cost savings in the short term as well… The only way we will be able to afford to expand the number of students is if we offer a new type of degree.”

He said the current system, whereby most students pay ￡9,000 a year and are offered loans to cover the cost, “privileges full-time residential courses”. Those studying while living at home face the same fees.

“This not appropriate for many potential students who want to study vocational courses in their local area, live at home and combine their studies with paid employment,” Professor Thrift added.

“So universities and colleges should be able to offer a new ￡5,000 fee degree, focused on vocational learning and offered to local students who would be eligible for fee loans but not maintenance loans or grants.”

One method of delivering the new cut-price courses could be through local further education colleges, using materials produced by established universities – a model that the Universities Minister David Willetts favours. This would allow students in parts of the country without a nearby university to earn a degree, although there would be a minority in far-flung areas who would still not be able to access the scheme. They could take alternative routes – such as an Open University degree.

The report, due to be published on 10 June, also warns that the present system of fees and loans is “not sustainable” and echoes estimates by the respected Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank last year that there could be a ￡1bn a year “black hole” in government finances as a results of students failing to pay back the loans.? At present repayments do not start until a student is earning ￡21,000 a year, and any remaining debts are written off after 30 years.

The Government originally estimated that 30 per cent of loans could go unpaid, but the commission reckons this figure could actually be as high as 40 per cent.

It also urges ministers to at least “hold steady” to the current percentage of 18- to 21-year-olds going to university through the financial squeeze.? It says a drop in the birth rate means that the numbers in the age cohort will reduce until 2020 – thus saving the Government up to ￡3bn over the next seven years as student number are reduced while retaining the same quality of students going to university.

The cut-price degree plan received a lukewarm reception last night from the Russell Group – which represents 24 of the most research-intensive universities including Oxford and Cambridge.

Dr Wendy Piatt, its director general, said it was “an idea that should be explored”. However, she added: “￡5,000 may not be enough to offer a high quality degree.? For Russell Group universities, which are committed to providing a world-class research-led learning experience, it would be impossible.”

She added that cutting public expenditure on higher education “would be a false economy”.

Case study

Joshua Pauley,? 18, lives in Southampton

This week I’m coming to the end of my first year studying music journalism at Southampton Solent University.

The fees are around ￡7,000 but they are going up next year. Once uni is finished I have to be on ￡21,000 a year to start paying off the loan, so there’s not an immediate pressure to pay it back.

From the start I decided I wanted to stay at home and study nearby, but over the past few months I’ve thought I might want to live on my own. The way things are now, without paying rent I can afford to pay for my own food and laundry and stuff so I’m not leeching off my mum even though I’m still at home.

But if I had to pay rent I would probably end up having to go to her for money for other stuff and I don’t want to do that.

A lot of my friends who live in halls have had to take extra jobs to afford it, and have to go into their overdraft on top of all their loans. I don’t actually think I should get cheaper fees for living at home, but maybe cheaper fees should be across the board.

Also, if you did get more money for not leaving home, people who really want to study elsewhere might end up staying at home.”

In numbers

5,000 The cost for cut-price degrees, as suggested by the think-tank.

30 The percentage of loans that the government originally estimated could go unpaid but the Commission reckons this figure could be as high as 40 per cent.

￡1bn There could be a ￡1 billion a year “black hole” in government finances as a results of students failing to pay back the loans.

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Hove vs Gove: Education Secretary Michael Gove accused of ignoring local wishes with plans to build new free school on playing fields

Now he has a new nemesis: the city of Brighton and Hove. A Department for Education (DfE) plan to concrete over playing fields to make way for a new free school has residents, teachers and even a local Conservative MP up in arms. Under the banner of “Hove vs Gove”, a group of campaigners has vowed to save their “village green” – known as Bhasvic Field – and has accused Mr Gove of once again riding roughshod over a community’s wishes in pursuit of his free schools policy.

“We have already had three offers for people to climb the trees and refuse to be moved,” says Lou McCurdy, who leads the Friends of the Field community group. “All I’d say to him is: don’t underestimate us, Mr Gove.”

The saga began in September when Mr Gove declared his approval for a new free school in Brighton and Hove: the King’s Church of England School, set up by the Russell Education Trust, which is sympathetic to Mr Gove’s focus on traditional subjects in schools.

Consultants from the centrally funded Education Funding Agency (EFA) were brought in to look for appropriate sites for the school, which would cater for 1,050 students aged 11 to 18. After “a thorough search over nine months”, they came up with their solution two weeks ago: to build the new school on playing fields already used by four existing schools and described as a “village green” by nearby residents.

“We were shocked and outraged,” said Dr James Kilmartin, the acting headteacher of Cardinal Newman School, which owns part of the playing field, on a site shared with Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College (Bhasvic) and Stanford Junior and Infants Schools. “There was no consultation. We use that field every day – for cricket, rounders, athletics, football. Nobody locally was consulted. The powers of national government under the Education Act (2011) are immense and we find ourselves having to resist them.”

Last week, the four schools issued a joint statement warning that the plan would leave them unable to deliver their sports curriculum and would “permanently remove a vital green space in the heart of a densely populated city”.

Civic leaders of all stripes have spoken out against the plan – creating yet another headache for Mr Gove’s department, which is fresh from a clash with the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, over its reluctance to make public information on the groups setting up free schools. The DfE is also embroiled in bitter rows with communities in Croydon, in south London, and Brent, in north-west London, over plans to turn schools into academies against the wishes of many parents and staff.

The DfE, not Brighton and Hove? City Council, will have the final say on the location of the King’s Church of England Free School.

“It undermines the role of local councils if they aren’t able to make? decisions on things like this,” said Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. “The idea that this Government can preach localism, then rule that they can come here and commandeer a piece of land against the wishes of the local community is just wrong.”

Anger at Mr Gove and the DfE is running so high that even the Conservative MP Mike Weatherley, whose Hove and Portslade constituency includes the playing fields site, has decided to take on the Education Secretary, highlighting that the plan flies in the face of the Government’s responsibility for the Olympic Games legacy and preserving playing fields.

“It’s a green space of which there are precious few in Brighton and Hove,” he said. Although claiming that the Green-led council had not done enough to find alternatives because of its “ideological opposition” to free schools, he said he wanted to be told the full extent of the site surveys undertaken by the DfE.

“If they haven’t looked at all the possibilities, I want to make sure they do more,” he said. “It might mean I’m against the DfE – if I am, so be it.”

Officials at the DfE have sought to play down fears that the new school would destroy one of the community’s last remaining green spaces, pointing out that it would take up just 3.6 acres of a 22-acre site, and claiming that the amount of “open space” remaining would be “equal to around 17 full-sized football pitches”. They said any final decision would be made in “consultation with the community and the agreement of the council”.

However, locals are dubious. Councillor Ruth Buckley, of the Green? Party group on Brighton and Hove City Council, queried the Government’s figures, and said the main school field locals were trying to save was only five acres.

School leaders also fear that the impact of placing another school so close to three others will lead to serious overcrowding in the area. The EFA is also considering plans for a three-form primary school on the site for an extra 630 children. “There are 2,000 pupils at Bhasvic and 2,200 here at Cardinal Newman’s,” said Dr Kilmartin. “Now they are talking about 1,600 or 1,800 more – that’s the best part of 6,000 students in a very small space.”

For his part, Steve Flavin, the headteacher of the new free school, was as surprised as anyone with the EFA’s decision– but is hoping that the plan can go ahead amicably. “We didn’t know in advance that the EFA had identified this site, presumably in close liaison with the local authority,” he said. “No one at King’s or within its sponsor, the Russell Education Trust, was involved in this choice of permanent site.”

The school will open at a temporary site in Portslade Old Village, with its first intake of 125 year seven pupils arriving in September, and the school is expecting to remain there for the next three years, before a possible move to the Bhasvic Field site.

Heads at the four schools say they are not opposed to the idea of a new school in the area. “We have no objection whatsoever to the free school,” said Dr Kilmartin. “It’s just that they want to build it on our school playing field.”

... East Durham

The Education Secretary won no friends in the North-east when he said: “There is a real problem of ambition in certain traditional communities, like East Durham, which needs to change.

“It is the case that there’s no choice, the local council has been one party for many years and when you go into those schools you can smell the sense of defeatism.” The local MP, Phil Wilson, called it an “outrageous statement”.

... Sandwell

Mr Gove apologised for a “terrible mistake” over the “clumsy” announcement that nine schools in the West Midlands borough had won funding for a rebuilding programme, only to be told a day later that the information was wrong and none would get any money after all. The council was one of six to later win a High Court battle over the cancelled funds, which was judged to be an “abuse of power”.

... Haringey

Attacking parents and headteachers opposed to schools being taken out of local authority control to become academies, Mr Gove described them as “ideologues happy with failure”.

He singled out the? London borough of Haringey, where the Downhills Primary School in Tottenham eventually lost a High Court battle to resist conversion, despite parents opposing the plan and saying they felt “ignored, ridiculed,? and insulted”.

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