About us
Background (top)
Sparsholt Schools' Centre for Environmental Education is a well resourced Hampshire County Council day use study centre, located in the grounds of Sparsholt College. The unique rural setting provides a diverse and stimulating environment with access to a working mixed farm (dairy, pigs, deer and sheep), ponds and woodland. Other resources include glasshouses, fish hatchery, aquatics, animal care and equine centres, forestry, wood yard and engineering workshops. A wide range of outdoor environmental programmes are available for KS1 - KS4 and Advanced levels. Hampshire and Portsmouth maintained schools, have a free entitlement to use the Centre.
The Centre is staffed by fully qualified, experienced teachers who liaise with visiting school staff to provide programmes to meet the needs of their pupils. A wide range of resources, including teachers' packs and an interactive website are available to assist teachers in preparing and following up a visit. In this way, a visit to Sparsholt can be integrated into the teaching and learning of pupils. Well planned learning activities in the outdoor environment have been proven to raise pupils' achievement.
Our vision is to … (top)
- inspire all visitors with a sense of wonder at the natural world by providing a positive outdoor learning experience.
- raise pupils' achievement by creating enjoyable outdoor learning experiences through which they can develop their knowledge, skills and understanding of the countryside and environmental issues.
- provide all learners with opportunities to consider the impact of their values and attitudes on our living world.
- encourage visitors to promote a more sustainable lifestyle by exploring and reviewing their choices and actions as responsible citizens.
- enrich the whole school community by encouraging the adoption of policies and practices that will support sustainable development.
We do this by … (top)
- providing a safe and stimulating learning environment by making full use of the diverse resources available at Sparsholt College and the surrounding area.
- providing teachers with support before, during and after a visit to Sparsholt in order to integrate the visit into pupils' learning experience.
- providing high quality teaching resources for pupils and teachers and making these easily available to schools via the Centre's website.
- providing stimulating displays, information and activities to raise our visitors' awareness and understanding of their environment.
- demonstrating sustainable development to all our visitors by practical examples in everything that we do, e.g. care of wildlife and recycling our waste.
- integrating the use of ICT into our teaching programmes in order to provide teachers and pupils with opportunities to develop their skills and to demonstrate a meaningful use of ICT in teaching and learning.
- providing schools with equal opportunities for visits by maintaining an efficient administration and booking system and by regularly reviewing the Centre's Policies including monitoring the quality of our courses.
- supporting county and national environmental education, farming and countryside links through membership of local and national organisations.
