Our Year 7 students learned essential survival skills during a new project.

Teacher Nigel Barrett, who is an ex-Royal Marine, showed our students how to build a temporary shelter called a Basha, how to start a fire using flints and steels and how to find north without a compass.

Mr Barrett said: “The students loved it and found it particularly exciting to learn how to light a fire without matches.

“We talked about survival skills and they learned how to navigate and find north without a compass and how to find the North Star.

 “It was the first time we had run this project and it will lead nicely into the recruitment process we will run here later in the year for the Brooke Weston Trust Combined Cadet Force.”

Before the students set their small fires they de-turfed a small area of grass so that they were able to return it to its previous state after the exercise.

To see more pictures from the project click here