the educator mag May 24 (1) - Flipbook - Page 58
Planning for play
Strategically improving playtimes
in primary schools is one of the best
things we can do for children
On March 12, the headteachers from five
extraordinary primary schools gathered in
an oak-panelled room just off Westminster
Hall to receive a special award presented by
MP Kim Leadbeater. The occasion was the
launch of the A Plan for Play
[ https://outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk/]
report, produced by the All-Party
Parliamentary Group for Fit and Healthy
Childhood. The awards were for sustained
excellence in the quality of play provision
for every child.
The premise of the A Plan for Play report
is that children are suffering the
consequences of adults not taking the
need for play seriously in childhood, which
has a devastating impact on all aspects of
their wellbeing, development, and
happiness. It points out that anyone with
decision-making power over children’s lives
can no longer assume children have
sufficient play opportunities. Things can
only improve if adults take a planned
strategic approach to play.
One focus of A Plan for Play is on play in
schools, including a case study examining
the work that the Community Interest
Company Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL)
is doing to transform the quality of play
in over 1,000 UK primary schools. Senior
school leaders may question why, in
addition to the many requirements placed
upon them, they should allocate valuable
time and resources to something as trivial as
play. This report builds on a previous
one sponsored by Sport England called
The Case for Play in Schools[
https://outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk/],
which provides a comprehensive literary
review of the evidence of why schools
should invest in planning for play.
The case can be broken into three
broad categories:
Firstly are the instrumental benefits of
play. OPAL’s work has demonstrated that
many problems schools experience around
playtimes are resolved through a planned
and strategic approach to improvement.
This should not surprise people whose job is
to be strategic. Play takes up about 20% of a
child’s primary school life, amounting to 1.4
years overall. Why would a school not have a
strategic approach to such a significant, and
often the most problematic, portion of its
delivery time?
When a school gets professional support to
understand the nature of play, how to plan
for it and staff it, and provide appropriate
resources and supervision, as happens with
the OPAL Primary Programme, typical
outcomes include an 80% drop in
recorded incidents, 10 minutes more
teaching time per teacher per day, and a
noticeable increase in children’s life skills.
Next are the intrinsic benefits of play.
Children are the young of the species Homo
sapiens. Play is the evolutionarily developed
mechanism to wire the brain, practice life
skills, grow regulation and resilience, create
a sense of agency and wellbeing and trigger
feelings of joy. A childhood without play
cannot serve children’s emotional,
physical, mental and social needs.
When play in schools is outstanding, these
needs are met.
The opening section of A Plan for Play
reminds us that childhood has changed,
but children’s needs have not. For many
children, school playtimes are the only
opportunity left in childhood for sociable
outdoor free play.
As OPAL’s founder and director for 13
years, I have drawn on my experiences as a
playworker, a primary teacher, and a school
improvement adviser. In my opening speech
at the launch of A Plan for Play at the Houses
of Parliament, I asked what skills and
qualities this generation of children will
need in a post-AI employment market. I
pointed out they are the same ones that
play is best equipped to develop, as they
cannot be taught by instruction but must
be developed by experience, imagination,
creativity, resilience, collaboration,
ingenuity, flexibility, and enquiry.
The third category is the moral and ethical
view of play. Play is a human right for
children. It is enshrined in Article 31 of the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child, which points out that it is not a
luxury right to be considered as ‘a nice thing
to do’. It is a fundamental right indivisible
from all the others in the convention.
As the gatekeepers of a large part of
childhood, school leaders have a duty to
implement children’s rights in schools.
Senior leaders will know how difficult it is to
change an organisation’s culture and sustain
the hard-won improvements. Over the past
13 years, OPAL CIC has been conducting
continuous action research to create the
OPAL Primary Programme, an economical
and effective way to support schools in
becoming providers of outstanding play,
for every child, every day. Demand has
been very high, leading to rapid growth
from eight specialist mentors in 2019 to
43 in 2024, supporting around 850 new
schools across the UK annually to create
lasting cultural change and benefitting
over a million children.
After the formalities of the Houses of
Parliament event were over, the
headteachers from the five outstanding
schools, Damien Jordan from Fairlight in
Brighton, Glyn Jones from Blue Coat in
Wooten under Edge, Helen Grainger and
Caroline Hodgeson from Esh Winning in Co
Durham, Chris Thomas from Beacon Rise in
Bristol, and Dan Rodeck from Filton Avenue
in Bristol, all met chatted with each other
for the first time. A clear consensus soon
emerged between them that they could
never return to a time when play was not a
serious and planned part of their school’s
delivery. Along with all of the instrumental
and intrinsic benefits they had witnessed,
the best was the sense of energy, joy, and
happiness that had permeated their schools
due to planning for play.
Michael Follett is founder and director of
OPAL Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL)
CIC. Drawing on his experiences as a
playworker, teacher and school
improvement officer, Michael
established OPAL in 2011 and it has
grown into the UK’s leading
organisation providing support to schools
in the transformation of all aspects of
play. He is author of ‘Creating Excellence
in Primary School Playtimes’ JKP 2017.
