This Week in Brief
This week’s strongest signal is a move toward professional standards: researchers at the University of Lincoln, working with WALTHAM, have released a first-of-its-kind risk assessment tool for animal-assisted interventions in schools — directly addressing the sector’s long-running gap in shared minimum standards for training, welfare, and safe handling. On the ground, Hampshire’s New Forest Schools Day brought 300 pupils face-to-face with livestock, and Chester’s Firs School welcomed Ziggy, a registered PAT Labrador, to its pastoral team. Specialist provision is widening too, with a 2026 study trialling animal-assisted psychoeducation for children in paediatric oncohaematology. Running underneath it all is the welfare-and-safeguarding question — how to keep both children and animals safe — which remains the field’s central responsibility as adoption accelerates.
🐾 Animal-Assisted Learning & Intervention
⭐ First-of-its-Kind Risk Assessment Tool for AAI in Schools
Researchers at the University of Lincoln, working with WALTHAM, have released what they describe as the first comprehensive risk assessment tool for animal-assisted activities in schools, alongside unified safety and welfare guidelines applicable to any animal therapy programme. It directly addresses the sector’s biggest gap — the absence of shared minimum standards for training, welfare assessment, and safe handling — and is a significant step towards professionalising the field.
Animal-Assisted Learning: An Educator’s Guide
A practitioner-facing guide framing AAL for classroom educators rather than clinicians — useful when explaining the distinction between incidental animal presence and structured, goal-led learning. Signals growing demand for accessible, teacher-first resources.
🐕 Therapy & Visiting Animals in Schools
Firs School in Chester Welcomes New Therapy Dog “Ziggy”
The Firs School on Newton Lane, Chester, has welcomed Ziggy, a two-year-old Labrador Retriever and registered Pets As Therapy (PAT) dog, as its newest “member of staff,” working alongside the school’s learning mentor to support pupil wellbeing. A tidy example of the growing normalisation of registered visiting/resident dogs in UK primaries.
Canine Literacy: Reading to Therapy Dogs Boosts Confidence
OC Animal Allies’ Canine Literacy programme runs monthly sessions in which children read aloud to trained therapy dogs. Staff report that pupils previously uncomfortable reading out loud have grown in confidence, and attendance has improved because children don’t want to miss the dogs — a concrete case study of the mechanism behind reading-to-dogs schemes.
🐄 School Farms & Farm-Based Learning
⭐ 300 Pupils Explore Farming at New Forest Schools Day
Over 300 pupils from 11 primary and junior schools across Hampshire spent a day at the New Forest Show Showground for hands-on discovery of food production, farming, and conservation — meeting sheep, lambs, cattle, goats, and a New Forest pony. A strong example of large-scale, place-based farm learning connecting children directly with livestock and land.
Bowers Farm — School-Owned Working Farm as Learning Estate
A 93-acre school-owned working farm (sheep, horses, cattle, goats, plus horticulture and community gardens) illustrating the “learning estate” model of farm-based education. A helpful concrete example when arguing that farm learning can be embedded in, not bolted onto, a school.
🌟 SEND & Specialist Provision
⭐ Animal-Assisted Psychoeducation in Paediatric Oncohaematology
A 2026 observational study evaluates an animal-assisted psychoeducational intervention for children undergoing treatment in paediatric oncohaematology — extending AAL into hospital-based specialist provision. A reminder that “specialist provision” spans clinical and medical education settings, and that structured, goal-led animal work is being trialled with some of the most vulnerable young learners.
Equine-Assisted Intervention and Adaptive Behaviour in Autistic Children
A study on equine-assisted intervention as a strategy for improving adaptive behaviour in autistic children — a reminder that AAI in SEND extends well beyond dogs, and that equine work has its own growing (if still developing) evidence base.
🎓 Adult & Further Education Settings
Animal-Assisted Initiatives for Belonging and Wellbeing in Higher Education
A 2026 paper arguing that low-cost, co-designed peer-mentoring and animal-assisted initiatives can enhance belonging and wellbeing for higher-education students. Notable for framing AAI as an equity/belonging intervention rather than only a stress-relief novelty — a useful angle for the post-16 and FE conversation.
Animal Management Courses (Level 3) Launching 2026
New Level 3 Animal Management provision starting in 2026 — a reminder that FE colleges are a distinct part of the animal-and-education landscape (vocational animal care), adjacent to but separate from animal-assisted learning. Worth distinguishing the two when writing for mixed audiences.
⚠️ Poor Practice & Welfare Concerns
⭐ Dangerous Dogs and Safeguarding Children — Procedural Guidance
Safeguarding guidance setting out how schools and practitioners should assess and manage dog-related risk to children — a sober counterpoint to the enthusiasm for classroom dogs, and a reminder that dog presence sits within safeguarding, not just wellbeing. Anyone introducing a dog to a setting should be able to point to exactly this kind of risk framework.
BVNA “Welfare of Pets in Schools” Toolkit
The BVNA’s toolkit for teachers, parents, and veterinary professionals aims to improve conditions for animals already kept in schools and to promote responsible practice. A constructive, harm-reduction resource for the many settings that already have animals — a pragmatic counterpoint to the abolitionist position.