PUPILS, parents and members of St Mary’s RC Church came together on Sunday 12th March to support St Mary’s RC Primary School in developing their Forest School area.

St Mary’s RC Primary School has been awarded a grant by Tesco’s Bags of Help scheme to take learning outside. Tesco’s Bags of Help is a community scheme, supported by Groundwork, where the money raised from the 5p bag charge is used to fund local projects in communities across the UK.

The primary school received funding to transform an area of wasteland in the school in order to offer pupils opportunities to learn outside.

Sunday’s ‘Big Dig’ was the first stage of the project and the school will be inviting members of the community to support the development of the Forest School over the coming months.

Thanks to the grant, St Mary’s will be purchasing equipment for the pupils to support them with their outside learning; everything from cooking outside, to building dens and exploring wildlife such as bugs, bats and birds, and growing wild flowers.

Mr Evans, Deputy Headmaster of St Mary’s RC Primary School, said: “We were thrilled when we received the news that we had been awarded a Tesco’s Bags of Help grant. Developing a Forest School area is fundamental to children developing confidence through hands on learning outside and to improving their physical health and wellbeing. Today was a fantastic opportunity to invite the local community into our school to get started and all our volunteers worked incredibly hard with clearing, digging, strimming, weeding and pruning. A huge thank you to Tesco and all our volunteers today, now the children can start using our Forest School area and we can turn this project into a reality.”