Would parents consider a part-time outdoor education setting for ages 5 to 7?

[thinkingdeeplyabouteducation]

I want to set up a little 'education setting' for children aged 5-7 (to start with). Very loosely, the main focus would be that it would be an outdoor setting with strong academics but creativity at its heart. completely screen free - protecting childhood.

english and maths would still be taught by qualified teachers - the rest of the 'curriculum' would be dedicated to free-play/the arts/learning about the environment etc.

long-term, would love for it to become a registered school but that's a huge journey so looking for opinions on whether parents (not just those who are already home-educating) would see the following as a viable alternative to school:

start as a 3 day model.
fees would be as close as possible to nursery fees.
registration with ofsted would unlock tax-free childcare.
whether it's part-time nature might actually become a selling-point. so many parents i speak to think school starts too early but equally worry about their child being left behind / them having to work with their children at home - this would offer some sort of compromise.

Any thoughts welcome - this has all been typed as a bit of a stream of consciousness but hopefully i've got the general gist across!* *

!!!Please note - I am not asking for comments on the logistical/legal side of this and whether it's going to be viewed as an illegal school. I am fully clued up on this and have sought legal advice etc!!!

Would it be compulsory three days a week or could you do one day up to a maximum of three? At that age I would also want some science and English and reading to feature heavily. What happens at 7? I like the idea of lots of outside time, but I work outside. It's miserable a lot of the time and I'd be worried about how well the kids would be able to focus on actually learning anything.

Pretty much every fellow nursery parent in my son’s class is counting down the days until we stop paying nursery fees. I can’t imagine many people wanting to sign up for another 2-3 years of paid provision when state schools are available. You’ll only get home schooling children, I imagine, and even they won’t necessarily want to commit to paid for provision with the structure you suggest.

I think it would be very difficult logistically. I can’t do a lot of summer clubs as they’re only 1000-1500 and my working hours are longer than that. What would people do for the two other days a week? Would you offer wrap around care?

It sounds like it might end up being the worst of both worlds (as someone whose child has attended forest school all through KS1 & KS2) - the selling point of forest school is generally autonomy and child-led free play, with adult supervision only really light touch for safety purposes and providing 'invitations' to play/learn by strewing equipment or setting up craft material tables which can be accessed or not at will. So if you are teaching or doing guided activities then you don't get that benefit. But at the same time, if they are doing structured tuition, then a wet forest in February is utterly miserable and no-one will be able to concentrate on anything complicated. There is a lot of potential for doing maths and science in a hands-on play-based way in KS1 (floating and sinking, materials, using maths manipulatives to establish basic concepts like arrays for multiplication etc) but reading will be very difficult to do as you will end up with loads of damp, wrinkly, torn/muddy books or laminated flash cards in a really useful box and kids being constantly distracted by the surroundings when asked to do a tricky decode.

These already exist within the home education community. People pay nowhere near the amount of money that nurseries charge. As far as I can tell the people running them have their own kids there as well and just want to offset their running costs and have company for their kids, it’s not really a job or business for them.

Thanks for everyone's replies. To clarify - we would have access to the indoors, I should have made that clear.

We already run something similar for KS2 which has worked well so fully appreciate the cold, wet winter days!

Also it is hard to make enough money to stay open when running a forest school, you would probably need to diversify either into becoming a recognised Alternative Provision for the your LA or kicking out the kids by 3pm and doing paid after-school wraparound for your local primaries until 6pm instead.
Alternative Provision would mean you'd be taking kids who might need 1-2-1 or even 1-2-2 ratios so a lot more staffing costs that might not work, and there are fewer of these places funded in KS1 as a lot of kids who need this later are still waiting on EHCPs or "they need to try school for a bit longer before we consider anything like EOTAS".

So many variables

if people don’t home school what about the other 2 days of the week

will there be wraparound and
holiday clubs

why only qualified teachers for maths and English? What about everything else??

will you cover the entire syllabus

how much will it cost

will there be SEN provision

Love the concept and would definitely consider if it was full time.

In fact I wish all schools at this age were this format!

For 3 days a week I just couldn't justify it as where else would do 2 days a week and legally at that age they have to be full time.

I guess the setting could be great for homeschoolers but at 3 days a week that would be quite a lot for those who are homeschooling because they want to be driving the curriculum from home.

You probably know this already but I'd also be aware you'd be likely to get a lot of SEN kids for whom mainstream school wasn't working out as they are a lot of the kids who are not in regular school but who's parents still want them in a group type setting. I'd be curious as to the social model you'd look to adopt, ie: more Montessori / Steiner which are quite rules and compliance based and therefore not a great fit for a lot of the SEN kids you'd be likely to attract? Or a more self-directed model?

I think it would appeal to people who home school but also need to work as a sort of “half way house/ slightly alternative provision”

but yes - then what at 7-11

Ooooh you are so wrong on that.

Firstly there are affluent hippies (like me, sorry) who would prefer our kids to follow a more Scandinavian model where they aren't sat in a classroom all day every day at such a young age.

Then there are parents of SEN kids who can't cope in a mainstream classroom (also me) and would pay any amount of money to keep their kids in education. My SEN boy couldn't be in a classroom all day but would have adored a forest school. For context his special school he attends is £65k a year, so yeah... there are deep pockets where SEN is concerned.

Well if you're home schooling you'll be flexing as you go anyway.

I think if a child is expected to be fine in mainstream but the parents are just concerned about the UK school system getting too formal too early, then at 7 they just leave and join their local state school for KS2, and that would work without major problems given that the idea is that they wouldn't be behind in numeracy, literacy or social skills and would already have experience of attending a setting.

I guess so but I meant If you were home schooling and needed to work for the money and had this in place then it stopped at age 7 - that could be hard for people