The school will cover all of the skills from the Irish National Curriculum, utilising a more modern, inquiry-based approach to learning that generates motivation and develops life-long learners in our students.
We have three pillars to our curriculum: nature, nurture and knowledge. The knowledge will be covered through our inquiry-based explorations (6-8 week long student-led topics). Our nature side will be covered by teaching in, about and through nature – we aim to spend a large portion of our school day outdoors and will learn about conservation and sustainability, whilst also working on practical skills such as using tools, cooking, and gardening. Many students are struggling in National Schools at the moment due to heightened levels of anxiety: we aim to make wellbeing a core aspect of each day.
Our curriculum will be similar to the International Baccalaureate programme, taught across the world where the curriculum will remain similar each year, but topics covered will change and adapt to suit the needs and interests of the students. Our outline is already developed and ready to go – all we need is the inspiration from the students to get started!

We will not be managed, inspected or in anyway funded by the Department of Education. With the help of our school community, we will be able to decide on the direction of the school ourselves.

We will be inspected by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency in Ireland. They will ensure that staff are Garda Vetted and that all regulations regarding Child Safeguarding are in date and upheld.

We will strive to spend as long as possible in the outdoor environment each day – with additional shelters and the right clothing, we can make the most of our wonderful part of the world. ‘Bad’ weather is a description we are trying to move away from – encouraging students to be outdoors in many weathers helps build resilience, but more importantly saves them from spending their lives merely tolerating the ‘bad’ days in favour of a handful of ‘good’ ones, if we were to base this on our sunny days in Ireland! Don’t worry though, for those days when the weather is very inclement, we do have secure, cosy indoor areas – classroom bases, a drying room, admin area, a kitchenette and most importantly, toilets!. Students will be able to have a choice of where they prefer learning.

One of our, understandably, most asked questions – unfortunately until we have our last few costs in place, we are unable to finalise our fee schedule. The Outdoor Primary School will be funded through parental fees – we like the term: ‘self-funded by parents’.

We will be a CLG company which means that we will operate as a ‘not-for-profit’ Social Enterprise and will not have any shareholders – all additional funds will be rechanneled back into the school. This also means that we will be open to charity grants and funding opportunities.
We have a highly accomplished Board of Directors that will manage the school with both business and educational expertise. We have places reserved for parent representatives who might like to nominate themselves for election once the school year begins.

In previous inquiry-based schools, we have been delighted, but not surprised, that students have gone on to flourish in traditional secondary school both in terms of transition and when measured academically against their peers. The students in an inquiry-based school are taught to be more self-reflective and independent learners and this suits them well for the usual more difficult transition from traditional primary school to secondary. In discussion with principals from the local next-level schools, they do not foresee why there should be any struggle in the transition into a traditional secondary of students from The Outdoor Primary School.

Every student has different needs but if you think that your child will need additional help to be able to access and take part in school life with us then reach out and we can look at how best we can help support your child. Being on a tight budget, we would not have the availability for individual support assistants, but it is important to bear in mind that in different settings, behaviours that might have been a struggle in a traditional setting, may not materialise in our more nurturing and informal educational setting.

Students will learn Gaeilge alongside their usual activities as a fusing together of language subjects. Students always love inquiries into word meanings and etymology, and the links to Irish culture and history. We have a competent teacher who is a Gaeilgeoir (Irish speaker) and will teach alongside the class teacher to ensure that they would have the same level of Irish learning ready for transition to Secondary School. We will also have a native Spanish teacher who will teach them Spanish.

We love the more organic way that students form friendships across age-boundaries. When students are in mixed-age classes, they develop more of a sense of family with their classmates, a family of learners who support and care for each other. Giving older learners the chance to support younger learners builds their confidence and leadership skills, whilst younger learners benefit as they see their older peers modelling positive behaviour. Mixed-age classes encourage a spirit of cooperation where students are more likely to support each other than compete.
With our small class sizes, we will be able to work with individuals and small groups to work on their core skills at the level that they are at. Meeting the students at their own levels of ability means that they are more motivated to learn and can be challenged to exceed beyond the usual age-restricted confines in traditional schools.

Our wonderful Tech Specialist is working on how we can ensure that communications such as emails, newsletters and other parent-school links can be smooth and easily created – we may use a similar app to those already in use in schools or we may create our own platform.
With regards policies, the most important of these have already been written (such as for example our Health and Safety, Child First, Curriculum Overview policies), however as we move through our first year, all other policies will be drafted, run past the school community and then would be ratified by the Board of Management, being updated on a timely basis.

We will have a ‘soft drop-off’ from 08:30-09:00 to ensure that families have leeway with where they have to do drop-offs to more than one location in their school run. We will only have one collection time for our students at the end of the day, rather than the usual staggered Infant earlier finish time. Collection time will be around 2pm-ish but we will conform this.

Teachers in National Schools use a wide array of methods to assess where students are at and where they need additional support, and at The Outdoor Primary School we will be no different. State standardised tests are only one of these methods of assessing and are rarely looked upon as a reliable tool for individual assessment of a student. We will be monitoring each student carefully and will have constant close collaboration with parents as to celebrating their achievements and any additional supports needed.

We hope to be able to offer an afterschool club to help alleviate the additional strains on families but we will need a minimum amount of families signing up to this to be able to make it work. If we run an afterschool then this will run from the end of our school day until 4:30pm and will include a different focus on each day such as ball sports, arts and crafts, music etc. If this runs, then the afterschool provision will be an additional cost for parents.

Apart from a possible afterschool provision, we do not foresee any additional on top of our fees, bar maybe costs for one-off larger school tours or days out. There will be no ‘voluntary-fees’ or book rental/ purchase costs – all resources will be paid for by the school. There will not be an enforced school uniform. All outdoor clothing can be purchased very reasonably through local supermarkets; we’ll also operate a ‘Swop Shop’ as we know how quickly students grow out of things! Families will just need to pay an initial deposit to secure the school place.

A hot daily nutritious lunch is included in the fees – we can’t expect students to be able to focus on learning if they are hungry or cold: outdoor activity requires more sustenance! This is cooked in-house by the chef from SEK International who prepares everything from scratch and is well able to deal with different allergies/ dietary needs.

Screen time within schools can be a valuable educational tool – our students are growing up in an ever more digital age and need to be capable of skillfully interacting with and decoding what they are seeing online. We will teach our students to question what they see online, to research their biggest questions, and to interact with technology in an age-appropriate manner, and will support learning through some fun, online games. However, screen time within The Outdoor Primary School will be kept to a minimum and will be just one of our many learning tools.

There will be up to twenty children in a class with two qualified adults working with that class. There may at times be additional adults working with a class also when specialist workshops are taking place. All class teachers will have their Irish Teaching Council Number and therefore be highly experienced professionals.

At present we are looking to open with Junior and Senior Infants and First Class aged students. Each year we will grow organically as these students move through the school, however we may look to expand up by a year or so if the demand is there and we decide it is right within our community. We will need to expand but want to maintain our small class sizes to ensure that we keep hold of our close community feel.

We may have some text books to assist in the students’ learning but these will not dictate the curriculum; they would be to scaffold specific areas of learning only, as deemed useful by the staff.

We have a wide range of expertise within the teaching staff, and additional specialists, who will offer the usual primary school sports curriculum such as ball skills, team sports and athletics, as well as yoga, dance, orienteering. SEK International have superb facilities for sports with a basketball court, tennis/ badminton court, grass football pitch, and are even having built an additional 11-aside pitch with spectators stand!

We have 40 student places available this year and an already large number of prospective students on our waiting list, but we hope that we will be able to offer a place to as many families as decide TOPS would be a fit for their children.

This approach to education is not new and many of the most highly regarded schools work in the same way as TOPS will operate. If you’re interested in this approach to education, take a look at Liberty Woodland School in London; Green Schools in Bali and New Zealand; and Alma Forest School in Spain, for just a small handful of the many operating successfully.