Level 3 Forest School Leader Training
Join thousands who've already started their Forest School journey
Level 3 · Leader
Run your own Forest School.
The flagship qualification for Forest School Leaders, internationally. Recognised by Ofsted and the Department for Education. This is where you stop assisting and start leading long term programmes of your own.
This is the qualification that lets you lead independently. Level 1 qualifies you to lead nothing. Level 2 qualifies you to assist. Level 3 is the one that puts a programme, a site and a group of children in your hands, and it is the qualification employers and insurers ask for by name. Accredited by Open Awards, Ofqual regulated, reference 601/1727/8.
What changes at this level
You stop borrowing authority and begin to inhabit it.
Level 3 is not simply more content than Level 2. It is the level at which the programme becomes yours: you plan it, you hold the site, you make the judgement calls, and you carry the responsibility for what happens in the woods.
Practitioners tell us the same things afterwards. Anxious children settle faster. Disengaged children re-emerge. Labelled children get seen.
Schools and settings gain a practitioner who transforms culture, not just curriculum.
What you will learn
Everything a Leader is accountable for.
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Delivering a Forest School programme
Running sessions from planning through to delivery, over a full programme rather than a single good afternoon.
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The woodland environment
Ecology, woodland management, and building real site knowledge into your sessions so the place is still healthy in five years.
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Learning and development
The developmental theory behind what you see happening in the woods, and how to plan from what a child is actually doing.
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Practical skills
Tool use, fire lighting, shelter building, and working safely with groups in all weathers.
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Health, safety and risk benefit
Normal Operating Procedures, Emergency Action Plans, and risk benefit assessment you review rather than file.
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Your own ethos
Understanding and expressing what you believe about children, and making your practice congruent with it.
Three ways to take it
The course is the same. The support is what changes.
Every Archimedes course runs online, and that is deliberate. It means you can start now, work at your own pace, and build your evidence in your own setting rather than ours. What changes between these routes is how much of us you get with it. Email, WhatsApp, video calls and a trainer support session each week on all of them. On two of them, a trainer standing next to you.
Start on the first of any month and work at your own pace, with your tutor reachable by email, WhatsApp or a video call whenever you need them, a trainer support session each week you can join, and portfolio support until you finish. Your evidence is built in your own setting, outdoors, not at a desk.
Enrol now, start on the firstThe self guided online course in full, and then two days with a trainer beside you at one of our venues. The academic depth of the course and the practical skills employers and insurers look for. Every venue and date is listed below.
The self guided online course in full, and a full week with a trainer. Five days in the woods with us. Your portfolio is the same online portfolio as every other route, completed in your own time. Accommodation is available at some venues, from £152 for four nights. Every venue and date is listed below.
Internationally, Level 3 is £1,400, and every country and date is listed below. There is no prerequisite: you do not need Level 1 or Level 2 to take Level 3, though many people come up through them.
Children you will never meet benefit from the conditions you help create.
A Level 3 Leader shapes a site, a programme and a way of being with children that outlasts any one cohort. That is why the qualification takes the time it does, and why we will not shorten it.Afterwards
Where Level 3 can take you.
Most Leaders go on to run their own sessions in a school, nursery or setting, or to set up on their own. Some go further and train as an Archimedes Level 4 Trainer, qualifying other people through Levels 1 to 3. A few build a Centre of Excellence. None of that is required, and Level 3 is a whole and sufficient professional qualification on its own.
Booking
Find a date that suits you.
Every upcoming Level 3, self guided, supported and full immersion, in the UK and internationally, in one place.
See all Level 3 datesOr start online, £997
