Response to the GCSE natural history proposed subject content consultation

Summary 

The Lost Gardens of Heligan strongly supports the introduction of a rigorous GCSE that helps young people understand the natural world through scientific study, sustained fieldwork and practical experience.

We welcome the proposed focus on UK habitats and wildlife, human influence on the natural world, climate change, biodiversity loss and conservation. We also support the minimum requirement for 20 hours of fieldwork in environments available locally to schools.

Our recommendations are intended to strengthen the qualification’s distinctive, practical character and ensure it helps young people understand that they are part of nature, not spectators standing outside it.

We also ask the Department for Education to reconsider the title. We recommend that the qualification be called ‘Natural Futures’ rather than ‘Natural History’. Although the consultation focuses on subject content, the name will shape how pupils and parents perceive that content and whether the qualification feels relevant to the world young people are entering.

Evidence from children and parents

To inform our response, Heligan commissioned an online survey by Walr among 1,004 matched parent-child pairs in England. The children were aged 11 to 14 and respondents were drawn from every English region.

The two names tested created markedly different expectations. Children’s three leading associations with Natural History were fossils and dinosaurs (48%), museums (45%) and animals and wildlife (43%). Their leading associations with Natural Futures were the future of the planet (55%), protecting nature (37%) and climate change (30%).

These findings do not claim that children preferred one title to the other. They show that the titles frame the subject differently. Natural History predominantly signals the past, museums and collections, while Natural Futures more clearly communicates the planet’s future, environmental protection and change.

Why sustained access to nature matters

For many children, even ordinary contact with nature was unfamiliar. Sixty-one per cent had never collected conkers and the same proportion had never camped in a tent. More than half had never climbed a tree (55%) or collected shells on a beach (52%), while only 8% had helped to restore a wildlife habitat.

These findings support schools providing sustained, ordinary and purposeful contact with nature, particularly for children who may not have those opportunities elsewhere. Fieldwork should not be reduced to an occasional trip: repeated observation and practical activity can help pupils build familiarity, confidence and a relationship with place.

Concern and hope coexist. Seventy per cent of children were very or quite worried about extreme weather such as summer heatwaves, yet 58% remained very or quite hopeful about nature’s future. Nine in 10 saw people as part of nature and 89% believed people had substantial responsibility to protect it.

Recommendations on the proposed content

We welcome the breadth and ambition of the proposed subject content. To protect the qualification’s distinctive purpose, we recommend that the final content:

• Protects the minimum 20-hour fieldwork requirement and encourages repeated observation of places over time, rather than treating fieldwork as a single isolated exercise;
• Includes opportunities for purposeful activity, such as habitat restoration, wildlife monitoring and species identification, where locally appropriate;
• Frames people as part of an interdependent natural system, examining human relationships with nature as well as human pressures upon it;
• Connects climate change and extreme weather explicitly with their effects on habitats and species, adaptation and nature-based responses;
• Recognises school grounds, parks, gardens, housing estates, rivers, coasts and other everyday environments as legitimate settings for high-quality fieldwork;
• Encourages appropriate use of cameras, sound recorders, identification apps and other technology to observe, record and understand nature; and
• Ensures fieldwork can be accessed meaningfully by pupils with disabilities or SEND and by schools with unequal access to transport and biodiverse spaces.

Overall, the children’s responses support a course combining rigorous classroom knowledge, scientific observation, technology, fieldwork and carefully structured practical experience.

Recommendation on the title

We ask the Department for Education to rename the qualification ‘Natural Futures’. This would not diminish the importance of natural history or remove study of the past. It would provide a broader frame for the proposed content: understanding the natural world, recognising the forces shaping it and equipping young people to participate in its future.

A qualification intended to engage a new generation should sound as though it belongs to them. Natural Futures better reflects the active, practical and forward-looking course described in the consultation and the aspirations young people expressed through our research.

Methodology

The research was conducted online by Walr on behalf of The Lost Gardens of Heligan among 1,004 matched parent-child pairs in England. All participating adults were parents or legal guardians of at least one child aged 11 to 14. Parents and children answered separate sections of the questionnaire, with some questions asked of both audiences to allow comparison.

The sample included respondents from every English region. Fieldwork was conducted in August 2026. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and may not total 100%. For multiple-choice questions, respondents could select more than one answer. The executive summary and underlying data tables are available on request.