Princess Charlotte joined her big brother Prince George at the exclusive Thomas’s Battersea school in south London in September. The private school, which already boasted a rich programme focused not just on teaching maths, languages and English but on enhancing the children’s extracurricular interests, is now revamping its curriculum to cut on testing in favour of spending more time outdoor. 

Staff at Thomas’s, the group of five schools and a kindergarten in London that includes the one attended by George and Charlotte, are overhauling the timetable of their institutes to make sure children will be taught up to one in five lessons outdoors.

The new timetable will be in place by next year.

By following this new curriculum George and Charlotte will be able to kindle a fire by the age of eight.

They will also learn how to use a knife to whittle wood and track animals through snow. 

Children younger than eight will study traditional subjects outdoors, counting stones or reading aloud short poems inspired by the landscape.

This revamped curriculum will also teach the little Cambridges values such as teamwork, empathy and resilience.

These are skills that children remaining in the classroom every day of their school week can rarely learn, according Tobyn Thomas, the school’s principal.

He said: “These are the skills children need in the future when they go for jobs.  

“They are hard to teach in the classroom.”

Among the reasons behind the revamped curriculum and the bigger focus on the outdoors there are concerns over the pressure faced by young children because of hothousing.

Paul Wild, Thomas’s head of outdoor education, said: “It would be naive not to be concerned about the rise of hothousing and mental health pressures on children.”

The new programme introducing the outdoors into the lives of the students will likely be applauded by Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, who has often spoken about how spending time outside can boost the mental and physical wellbeing of children.

Appearing on CBBC flagship show Blue Peter in June, Kate revealed she “drags outside” her three children every day, come “rain or shine”, for their own good.

As she was getting her hands dirty by playing with children in the wild during one episode of Blue Peter, Kate said: “Rain or shine, they’re dragged outside. It’s great.

“It encourages creativity, confidence and even a short amount of time – 10 or 15 minutes – makes a huge difference to ­physical wellbeing but also to our mental wellbeing.” 

Kate and William forked out a total of 12,734 for the tuition fees of the first term of their children at Thomas’s Battersea.

The school’s admission costs depend on the number of children attending under one family.

Pricing is in place in bands for ages 4-7, and ages 7-13, and costs organised by how many children from one family are attending at any one time. 

If just one child is attending from reception to year 2 (ages 4-7), the cost is £6,429 per term.

A second child attending in the same age group can attend Thomas’s for £6,305 per term.

Costs go up by nearly £1,000 for first children in years 3 to 8 (ages 7-13), for whom termly fees cost £7,262.      

Source: Read Full Article