We are very grateful to the Pixel Fund for supporting our Urban Forest School programme for the second time.
Over the past two years, we’ve been able to extend outreach of our UFS programme to include schools who would not normally engage with us by being able to offer fully funded taster programmes. 76% of the Urban Forest School sessions we ran in 2022-23 were delivered to schools where 42-70% of the student population qualified for Pupil Premiums.
UFS is now TGC's most effective area of outreach, enabling us to work with some of the most deprived children in our community, supporting their mental health and social and emotional development over minimum 10-week programmes.
In 2021-22 we delivered 440 sessions in UFS, accounting for 35% of TGC’s overall activity. Next year, we’ve already confirmed 490 sessions, with more to come. Despite the programme’s growth, the need is still great with many schools who want to come on the programme not being able to due to financial pressures.
The Pixel Fund are therefore supporting us to provide 20 free Urban Forest School sessions each to two schools with acute levels of need as demonstrated by their relative proportion of Pupil Premiums allocation and English as a Second Language.
