It's Only Natural

This is the busiest time of the year for our national parks. For the next few weeks, the huge parks in Connemara, Wicklow, Killarney and Glenveagh in Co Donegal will be alive with school groups on trips, treks and guided tours.

There has been an increase in the number of schools availing of education services provided by our national parks and heritage sites, but "what we'd like to see is the schools coming in the off-season," says Anne Grady, education and marketing officer with Duchas, the Heritage Service. Park rangers and supervisors wish that classes would come in the autumn, winter or spring. In the meantime they will cater for the numbers they can manage.

In Glendalough at the Wicklow Mountains National Park, just under 5,500 young people availed of the education programme last year, ranging in age from four upwards. A programme has been in operation since 1992 at the park which stretches for almost 50,000 acres across south Dublin. "The potential for growth is huge," claims the park's 1997 report on its education and visitor service sector.

In Killarney National Park, the numbers for 1998 are well on course to exceed the high of 1995 when almost 4,000 students visited the park. There was a slump in 1996/1997 - no advertising took place in these years for contract reasons when the centre was about to be relaunched as joint operation involving Duchas and Co Kerry VEC.

Dr Noel Kirby, manager of Connemara National Park, says that last summer about 700 children, all aged between five and 10, attended the various programmes, which are free. They come for two days each week in July and August to attend activities organised by the park rangers.

Part of the park's year-round service includes making rangers available to schools for visits. This service was taken up by just 20 schools in the west last year. It's a poor show for schools in the area, agrees Kirby. Connemara National Park, covering about 5,000 acres, is one of the smaller parks. "The whole idea is to get them interested in nature," says Kirby. "If you get one of them aware of what's there I feel we've done a good job."

Mike Sandover, director of Killarney National Park Education Centre, says that for the next two months the park is "very heavily booked" while the park during the off-season months will be under-utilised. The months of October, November, December and January, "would be our slackest periods". For second-level schools April and May are our busiest.

It's because "teachers like to tie things in class with the exams and to keep everything as fresh as possible," Sandover explains. "A lot of our work down here is with Leaving Cert and Junior Cert groups . . . the field work down here would be directly tied in with the curriculum."

He believes that although "the uptake has been slow in the past, it has become more of a popular option" in recent years, in particular because the Leaving Cert geography option "is something that the student can have pre-planned each year. Some teachers are beginning to realise that." Also, he adds, "the whole area of the environment and ecology is gathering speed. It's becoming a lot more important."

The reason for the under-utilisation by teachers in out-of-season months is possibly related to the weather but he doesn't think so. "It's not a huge problem". Even if it's raining quite hard, "if we are down in the woodland we tend not to notice it". It has more to do with groups having to miss days out of school and some principals preferring to see classes in the class.

The push is on at primary level also to get schools out in to the wilds. Just after Easter 25 copies of Heritage Highlights, a school newsletter, was sent out to each primary school in the State. This the sixth year that the magazine was produced and targetted at fifth class.

"It's for use in the classroom," says Una McDermott, Duchas education and interpretation officer. "The range of topics in the newsletter reflects the breath of Duchas itself," she says. Teachers were asked to return a card with their comments. Already several hundred comment cards have been returned by teachers in praise of the magazine. "We hope to develop an overall education strategy for all the Duchas services, not just the national parks," says Anne Grady. In the meantime, she says, there are ongoing education programmes of various kinds in the country's sites, parks, monuments and waterways.