Bushcraft? What can that teach girls? A lot, says Sharon Griffiths, who loves the outdoorsy ethos of a North Yorkshire school where building fires in the woods and winter swims in the lake are all part of the curriculum.

THE five and six-year-old members of Queen Mary’s School adventure club have just completed a successful Easter egg hunt in the woods. Great fun for five-yearolds, but nowhere near as challenging as their usual activities. When asked their favourites, the hands shoot up.

“Foraging!”

“Making fires!”

“The climbing wall!”

“Building shelters!”

Meanwhile, the ten-year-olds have an initiative test – they’ve been handed a bundle of rods and some string with the instruction to build a freestanding catapult to see how far they can shoot an egg. Fantastic.

In previous sessions they’d built shelters in which they then spent the night. In November – which concentrates the building skills somewhat.

The week before they’d spent the weekend in a bothy with no road access.

Everything they needed they’d carried there in rucksacks as big as themselves. They had to fetch water from a spring and purify it, and had cooked their own supper from scratch over basic camping stoves.

Next term they might even be killing their supper before they cook it. They already know how to hunt for berries and nuts and which are safe to eat. They are a resourceful bunch and certainly wouldn’t starve.

Queen Mary’s is an independent school with 250 girls – and a few boys – from pre-school up to 16 years old.

It takes children with a wide range of abilities and does very respectably in the league tables. But the school is remarkable for the emphasis that it puts on outdoor education.

On its website, the list of activities on offer includes all the usual accomplishments one would expect for well brought-up young ladies – riding, music, drama, ballet. But there in the middle is something definitely different. “Bushcraft,” it says.

Bushcraft? What can that teach girls? A lot.

The girls of Queen Mary’s spend a lot of time outdoors. They can canoe and swim in the river that runs past the school and if the weather is really too appalling, well, they can toboggan down the main staircase on gym mats instead. And they do.

Headmaster, Robert McKenzie Johnston believes that children need an element of risk and danger in their lives. “For how else will they learn to cope with it and assess risk when they’re on their own? At the very least, children who’ve never had to think for themselves will walk out in front of traffic because they’ve always had someone to tell them when it’s safe.

“We encourage the children to assess situations for themselves. Yes, of course, we have done all the planning beforehand and are always there to prevent real danger.” He, for instance is a qualified canoe instructor, on the water whenever the girls are too – including February swims.

“Too often people use Health and Safety as an excuse not to do things.

Health and Safety doesn’t want to stop you doing things – just to be sure you are sensible.” Hence all the qualified instructors. “But you have to try things that are different, a challenge. Our girls aren’t bubblewrapped.

Outdoors is for fun. The river’s for fun. Let them enjoy it.”

Helping them do that are Sharon Hobson and Tracy Sockett, who come to school every week to run the Adventure Club.

Both Sharon and Tracy are ex-military – Tracy was in the RAF, and is qualified in just about every aspect of outdoor education, including caving, climbing and the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Sharon spent 12 years with REME, ending as company sergeant major. Now she instructs on a whole range of outdoor activities including taking groups trekking abroad – she’s off to Africa in the summer – runs managementstyle outdoor courses and could no doubt be terrifying.

She never expected to find herself dealing with young children. They aren’t at all terrified, running happily, eager and chatty, into the club’s headquarters – a hut stacked high with rucksacks, tents, and safety equipment “It’s great,” says Sharon, while handing out eggs to the ten-year-olds for the catapults. “So much of education is geared towards the academic and ticking boxes that children never have the chance to develop social skills, or working together, or having to think for themselves.

“Outdoor education is really important.

You have to rely on the stuff you need, not what you want. This isn’t about shopping or gadgets but real-life skills. We take them out of their comfort zone a little. And the girls love it.”

The ten-year-olds have already sorted themselves into groups and are working out how to transform the bundle of rods into a catapult.

It’s the sort of thing would-be army officers or high flying candidates for management training schemes have to tackle – and can be defeated by.

The girls, however, are engrossed in their groups, busy among themselves, all making suggestions, offering ideas, trying them out. Sharon is talking to me and although she gives the girls an occasional nod of approval or cheerful word of encouragement, what is remarkable is the way in which they are working together quite happily without asking for help.

They are totally, amazingly, absorbed, seem to take it in turns to be bossy, in the way that only ten-yearold girls can. No one is dominating the discussion, no one is left out. Any boss of any company would be ecstatic if his middle management could co-operate so well. This lot could probably win The Apprentice.

No problem.

Queen Mary’s girls spend a lot of time outdoors. Neatly ordered rows of wellies stand outside every door.

In the courtyard is a splendid new climbing wall.

“One of the very young ones went up there three times for Comic Relief, blindfold, and with two broken fingers,” says Sharon. “Like a rat up a drainpipe.”

The woods are a child’s heaven – a permanent campfire site and small corners with planks of wood lying around.

“They come down here and play, build dens, or assault courses, or mini showjumps or play like you and I did when we were young and just enjoy themselves.”

The River Swale flows past the school grounds. Many schools would perhaps have been tempted to put up high fences to keep the girls away from the river. Not at Queen Mary’s.

Instead, a shiny new wooden gate leads directly down to the water for easier, supervised, access.

“We’re planning a river crossing for next term,” says Sharon, gleefully, thinking of rafts and also talking happily of aerial walkways, rope slides, more physical challenges that are fun and so much more.

Earlier this month a report from Natural England revealed that fewer than ten per cent of children play regularly outdoors in a natural environment.

Most children are deprived of physical freedom and all the attendant skills to be learnt.

“I love seeing what the kids can do,” says Sharon. “Sometimes they can surprise us – and surprise themselves too. No one’s forced to do anything and it’s sometimes the least likely girls who can surprise you.

And that sense of achievement afterwards is wonderful. They really glow with it and, yes, of course it spills over into everything else in their lives.”

Next term Years 5 and 6 will be on a three-day canoe trip. In the past the girls have walked tightrope-style on scaffolding poles across the main hall – harnessed in case they fall, of course, but still...

Parents are supportive, enthusiastic, appreciating the sense of adventure and independence their children are learning. The girls are confident and capable and already you know they’re the sort who will be able to cope with anything.

Time’s up. The catapults are completed.

An egg soars into the air and splats very satisfyingly yards away.

Eat your heart out, Sir Alan Sugar.