Frequently Asked Questions
What do I have to do next?
Click the link to complete our application form and we will take things from there. If you have any more questions you can mail us at work@wild-learning.net.
What qualifications do I need?
As a minimum, you will need an Enhanced DBS (on the annual update service) and a current First Aid Certificate (preferably to REC24 standard).
How much can I expect to be paid?
We pay Site Leaders £135–£150 per day, depending on the site.
We pay Assistants in a band between £81–£100 per day, depending on their experience and which site they are working on.
How do I book my first paid work in?
Once we have accepted you as a freelancer we will email you with a choice of sites and dates. It is up to you to let us know which sites and dates you are available to work. Once we have agreed on dates/sites we will send you a contract for the year and written confirmation in the form of a Letter of Engagement (LoE). At which point you are hired!
Why do you ask for 3 assessment days when I am already qualified as a Teacher/Forest School Leader/Nursery Nurse/Astrophysicist (delete as appropriate)?
Because we don’t know how you’ll fit with us without seeing you work. The most important factor in whether you will be a good fit for us is you, and you are more than your qualifications or experience – we sometimes get apparently unqualified individuals who are naturals working with children; and likewise sometimes apparently very qualified people who are clearly not a good fit for us. The only way wecan tell who will fit and who won’t is to see them in action.
We get applications from people with all sorts of different attitudes,skill sets and expectations. Clearly, working with children outdoors, it is absolutely essential that we hire appropriate people for the roles (and weed out people who are unsuited). We take our duty of care (for staff and children) very seriously, and the first part of that is making sure that our staff are capable of doing what we ask of them. We don’t interview for positions because we’ve found that it’s utterly useless to ask someone how they feel about (for example) children and wild play, or managing risk-taking across a table in a coffee shop; we have to see how they act in the woods.
Additionally, experience on a CV is only a limited guide to whether someone will work happily with us; frequently we find that people with little or no experience but who really enjoy children’s company and can engage with them as equals are a good fit for us. Unfortunately you can’t gauge that from a qualification or a work history; you have to watch people in situ and make a judgement.
Why am I not being paid for my assessment days?
Because we pay a joining bonus instead.
The assessment period is our version of an interview, and most people would not expect to be paid to attend an interview. Having said that, we will in fact pay a recruitment bonus to people who pass our assessment process and are invited to work for us.
What we do is an enormous amount of fun, but it also sometimes involves getting up and going out when it is cold or raining, or when you might feel slightly under the weather. It is hard enough to motivate yourself to go to an indoor, centrally-heated job under those circumstances. It is much much harder to know you’ll be in the wet and/or cold all day; and to still turn up and be upbeat, sympathetic and enthusiastic. We rely on our freelancers to be where they say they will be: if they do let us down then we may have to cancel a whole day and let all our customers down because we would be outside our safe staff-children ratios. It’s obviously impossible to know in advance who will be reliable and who won’t, but asking potential staff to come out with us first at least gives us an idea of who is committed enough for us to rely on.
We recognise that coming out into the woods for three days (potentially for free) is (very deliberately on our part) quite a commitment. So, while you will not be paid at the time for attending assessment days, once we have accepted you as a staff member you will be paid a recruitment bonus of £50 per assessment day attended as and when you have completed five paid days for us (see below). If you do not pass our assessment period, or you do not complete the required paid days working for us, then you will not be paid the bonus.
Finally, when we ask potential new recruits to attend assessment days we don’t allocate extra children against them; in other words we make no extra money from the process. It’s not about getting free work from a recruit (indeed, speaking as a Leader, days working with a new recruit are often harder work than without); it’s about having an opportunity to see that person in the actual environment they’ll be working in, to have a chance to make a fair assessment of them, and to give them a chance to make a fair assessment of us.
When do I get my joining bonus?
We pay your joining bonus once you have successfully completed five days’ paid work for us.
What happens during my assessment days?
The first assessment day is mostly about you learning how we work and what we do. At the end of the day talk to the Site Leader about how you found it and any questions or thoughts you have.
The second and third assessment days are for us to see you in action, how you interact with the children and other Leaders, how you cope being fully involved in the day.
After your third assessment day your Leader for the days you were with us will write up an assessment and send it in to Head Office. You will also probably see one of the directors on your second or third day, who will also write an assessment. If we think you are a good fit for us we will email you within a week and offer you a place on our roster.
Can I be a Leader as soon as I have been accepted?
No. Whatever your level of experience, we do not appoint new staff to Leader positions immediately. Everyone is expected to work for at least one season as an Assistant.
This is because:
• There are more positions for Assistants than Leaders
• We give first refusal on Leader positions to established staff members (you will benefit from this when you are established with us)
• Whatever your skills and experience it takes some time to learn how we work, and to learn about the practicalities of the sites we have. Wild Learning is not the same as Forest School, or Bushcraft, or school, and whatever your background you will need time to learn from more experienced staff members before you are ready to lead.
If you would like to apply for a role with Wild Learning please fill in our online application form and we’ll get right back to you.
If you have other questions you can probably find the answers here: www.wild-learning.net/why-work-for-wild-learning/ or you can email us at work@wild-learning.net or even call us on 01483 424 400