A blog providing ideas and resources for those teachers hoping to teach the new GCSE Specification, first announced in April 2022. Draft subject content released for consultation in June 2026 - for first teaching from 2028 or 2029.
Hedgehogs love gardens, and fortunately there are around half a million hectares of garden in the UK. We know what hedgehogs need to survive in gardens.
Hedgehogs need access to lots of gardens to survive, so we are encouraging everyone to cooperate. Our Hedgehog Champions
That’s where you come in. More than 100,000 Hedgehog Champions are registered on this website, forming a vibrant and enthusiastic community. Champions help us make a real difference for hedgehogs all over the country.
Following a public vote, which attracted over 2 million votes in total, four animals have been selected to appear on English banknotes. The bumble bee got the most votes.
The Atlantic puffin, barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee and European hedgehog will represent UK wildlife and feature as the central images on our next series of banknotes.
The decision comes after nearly 500,000 people responded to a public consultation asking which native wildlife they would like to see on our banknotes. They chose from a shortlist of 18 options across three categories – mammals; birds; and amphibians, insects and fish – developed in collaboration with a panel of UK wildlife experts.
The Bank used the feedback from the consultation to decide on the four animals, one for each denomination of banknote. The selected animals meet the Bank’s objectives for a distinctive set of banknotes that can support counterfeit resilience and are representative of the UK.
The barn owl (Tyto alba), buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) and European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) were the most popular animals in their respective categories. The Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) was selected because it was the most popular marine animal. The inclusion of a marine animal will add variety to the series, making the denominations easier to distinguish and will provide an opportunity to celebrate the British coastline.
The decision on which animal will feature on which denomination will be made in due course and announced closer to launch. While the selected animals will feature as the central imagery for the next series, the banknotes will also feature other elements from nature to complete the designs, potentially including other shortlisted animals. The next series will continue to include a portrait of the monarch.
It takes a number of years to design, test and print banknotes, to make sure they are high-quality, resilient and accessible. The expectation is, therefore, that the first denomination from the next series will be launched over the next few years.
A film which was made a few years ago, and is now available to view on YouTube.
Hope Rewilded is a documentary exploring rewilding in Britain — what it means, why it matters, and whether giving nature the freedom to recover could help reverse the dramatic decline of our wildlife.
Across Britain, landscapes that have been shaped and depleted over generations are being given the chance to recover. Species are returning, habitats are regenerating and people are beginning to rethink what our countryside could look like.
But what does it really mean to rewild a country like Britain?
How much nature have we lost?
What should we bring back?
And how wild are we prepared to let Britain become?
Hope Rewilded explores these questions through some of the people at the forefront of rewilding, conservation and nature recovery in Britain. Featuring interviews with:
George Monbiot — environmental journalist, author and campaigner, and co-founder of Rewilding Britain. His books include Feral, an influential exploration of rewilding and ecological restoration.
Isabella Tree — award-winning author and co-owner of the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, home to one of Britain’s best-known rewilding projects. She is the author of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm.
Simon Roper — zoologist, conservationist and co-founder and Director of Ambios, an organisation working in nature recovery, conservation training and species reintroductions.
Prof. Alastair Driver — ecologist and leading UK rewilding specialist, former Director of Rewilding Britain and former National Conservation Manager for the Environment Agency, with more than four decades of experience in conservation and nature recovery.
At its heart, Hope Rewilded is not simply a film about what Britain has lost. It is about what we could get back. What happens when we give nature another chance?
The recently released proposed subject content references a BBC series called 'Wild Isles', which was made in association with the Open University.
This inspired the
There was an associated book published and I've bought a cheap second hand copy so that I have it as reference for whatever resources I get involved in creating.
Wild Isles is a celebration of the wildlife found on a relatively modest collection of islands positioned at a latitude so northerly to be unattractive to many animals and plants. Despite these unpromising foundations, the islands of Britain and Ireland, together with more than 6,000 lesser islets that make up our archipelago, contain some of the most diverse, beautiful and wildlife-rich landscapes and seas on our planet. This book will explore the fascinating relationships within and between species who make their home on our beautiful isles.
Each chapter focuses on a particular kind of wild space. Britain and Ireland are dominated by a wide variety of grasslands from lowland water meadows to upland moors, and we will see how these human-shaped, semi-natural landscapes thrum with insect, bird and mammal life. Life requires water to flourish, and streams and rivers carry freshwater through our landscape, creating unique ecosystems and interrelations within and beside these waters, which are revealed in a third section. While Britain and Ireland's woodlands are comparatively thin on the ground compared with most of continental Europe, we will see some of the forests and trees that remain are unusually ancient and, great repositories of life. Finally, of course, we are surrounded by sea, and our position on the continental shelf before it plunges into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean gives rise to an often overlooked plenty of marine life. A glorious richness divided into five breathtaking sections.
The book has inspired the choice of habitats in the proposed subject content, from which awarding bodies will have to develop worked examples and sample wildlife (flora and fauna) for students to engage with.
The replacement of historical characters, particularly Sir Winston Churchill, with British wildlife sent political leaders into a frenzy of condemnation earlier this year.
But now people have a month to offer their views about which species of wildlife should be honoured on the £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes.
The mammals are: the bottlenose dolphin, the brown hare, the European hedgehog, the grey seal, the pine marten and the red fox.
The second category of birds feature: the Atlantic puffin, the barn owl, the common kingfisher, the Eurasian curlew, the great spotted woodpecker, and the white-tailed eagle.
The final section of amphibians, insects and fish, has: the Atlantic salmon, the basking shark, the buff-tailed bumblebee, the common frog, the Emperor dragonfly, and the marsh fritillary butterfly.
One would hope that someone like Chris Packham or Michaela Strachan might be persuaded to work as ambassadors for the new specification once it gets to the stage where it is introduced into schools.
This was picked up in Topping Books just before the summer 2025. It's a really detailed and comprehensive guide to the nature to be found in the Fens. It's a book to dip into rather than read cover to cover, with chapters exploring different aspects of the Fenland landscape.
There are lots of excellent photographs, mostly taken by the authors themselves, who have certainly put in the legwork and mileage to cover the region they are writing about.
Publisher's description:
This book showcases the natural history and landscape of the Fens, an area now responsible for a third of Britain’s food production and worth over £3 billion to the economy every year. It describes the geology and geography across the Fenland Basin over the last 14,000 years, a period dominated by the flux of wetlands and movement of water. The human relationship with this landscape is traced through history: from Mesolithic hunters to the prosperity of a medieval economy based on the currency of eels, through the taming and draining of the vast wetlands, to modern farming on an industrial scale.
While recognising that only a fraction of the Fens is left, Fenland Nature celebrates the breadth of wildlife still to be found in the region, from vast flocks of visiting wildfowl in the winter months, to rare and specialised plants and insects – all illustrated with detailed and evocative photographs.
The book concludes by contemplating an uncertain future where there are possibilities for a sustainable agricultural industry alongside increasing biodiversity, requiring new ways of thinking and working with the land. The fenland landscape is a microcosm of the huge global challenges caused by habitat loss, ecological degradation and climate change. If solutions can be found to these complex issues in the Fens, then there is hope that these can also apply to similar places across the world.
It's written by two local authors who really know their local patch well. A great coffee table / browsing book.
A new BBC series which started this evening focusses on the wildlife that can be found in people's gardens, although frankly the first episode featured a completely unrealistic garden...
There's an interactive tool as well, made with the Open University, which you can use to uncover the secret wildlife in your own garden.
A good introduction to some of the wildlife to be found in Britain.
I've seen many of these myself, including badgers in the Peak District, and grebe courtships, and even a Bittern at Titchwell reserve. Also heard them booming on the Broads. Interestingly I was next to the wetlands in Cardiff over the summer as well.
There will be a monthly post looking at the full moon which occurs in that year. These have a name which often stems from America and Canada's Indigenous / first nation people, and the world they lived in, but that means they are not always appropriate for the UK.
This project is about suggesting a name which fits with the UK's wildlife.
The first one has just gone up, with Paula Owens suggesting that we call the Wolf Moon (January's full moon - which occurs tomorrow) as the Fox Moon.
A recent piece in The Guardian from Sophie Yeo uses the phrase 'nature's ghosts' to refer to some of the lost species which have been the result of modern farming methods. It's an extract from her new book of the same name, and is tellingly part of a series of articles called 'The age of extinction'.
The piece explores the "shifting baseline" and the quiet disappearance of animals we used to take for granted, such as hedgehogs. I also remember a fox family that used to live in the grounds of the derelict church opposite the GA headquarters in Solly Street, Sheffield. They are now a huge block of student accommodation, and the foxes are nowhere to be seen.
We cry habitat loss, but it’s theft, really – no one is so careless as to lose their home. We call it progress, but how dare we? How many people, throughout the planning process, will have thought of or cared about hedgehogs? Or considered any of the other residents, both human and wild? The management company would have conducted an ecology survey, no doubt. But, as is often the case, it was probably done in winter, when the hedgehogs were hibernating. Did any residents other than Choel and me know there were hedgehogs on that estate? Did anyone care? The council paved over the gardens to save money on maintenance. The trees and park were lost because the car parks that replaced them can be a source of income. The residents placed there by the council would not necessarily have known or thought about those habitats, making them so much easier to destroy.
It can be found upstairs behind a colourful but unassuming door in the Old Town.
This takes an irreverent look at the crustacean with a whole range of displays and fun captions. There is also a gift shop selling a range of fun postcards, pencils and other gifts for the crab-lover in your life.
The blog has a range of interesting posts, which will also give you an insight into the sense of humour that sits behind the whole experience.
Admission to the museum is FREE, and they promise that if you don't enjoy it you'll get your money back.
It gave me an idea for a possible student activity: that each member of a group selects a card with the name of a native animal from a chosen context e.g. British wildlife.
The plan would then be for the students to develop a plan for a museum, and some of the exhibits that would go into it, and create some display material, interpretive signage etc. I'm sure you can think of other elements to this task.
In time, once things become clearer, I will create a card deck for the activity with some sample UK wildlife to choose from, and a rubric for the task as well.
