Education White Paper - is there room to play??

Listening to Radio 4 this morning I was slightly heartened to hear that Michael Gove thinks that the new national curriculm should cover just 50% of the time, and that there should be plenty of space for 'music, creativity and' (did I hear this right???) 'fun'.

Well having just scanned the summaries on the children & young people now, times leader & comment, Mike Baker's blog and the DfE website I'm not so sure. I'm going to wait for NCB's assessment, but I am not at all sure this will give schools the confidence to think about the whole child.

The white paper seems to have a lot to say about behaviour. But nothing about the fact that schools still far too frequently pay scant regard to their outdoor environments, pushing hundreds of kids into huge expanses of concrete and no thought or support for their play or recreation.

Many schools are now reaping the rewards of investing in playtimes - chalks, scrap to play with, children empowered to shape their spaces. And these schools see a massive improvement in behaviour. Schools like St John the Baptist in Hackney and the schools that have scrapstores like Bromley Heath where I took the picture below. There the Head Teacher said he has saved 20 minutes after lunch every day because he no longer has cues of children to see him, and importantly those children that were always being told off for behavioral issues fell they are succeeding.

So how about we call for playtime to be extended in all schools? That children have to have 20 minutes morning and afternoon and 90 minutes for lunch? That's one return to the old-school that many of us would cheer!

Has play got a place in secondary schools?

The last Government, in preparation for the Children's Play Strategy, consulted children & families on what they wanted them to invest in around children's play. With over 9000 responses - mostly from children and young people - the overwhelming support was for more and better places to play for 8 - 14 year olds. Not for small children, but children who are already or will soon be at secondary school. 

Adventure Playgrounds - the places of magic that transform the lives of so many children - are open to all children up to 16 or 18.

Well today I did a presentation to a group of organisations representing secondary schools - unions, governors, curriculum specialists. There was broad agreement around what play can do for children - the importance for their mental and physical health, the fact that this is where children get to make friends that last a life time, that risk is essential in their play.

The biggest problem for secondaries - as highlighted in research by Peter Blatchford from the Institute of Education - is that most secondary schools have just a short morning break and barely any lunch time play.  This has dramatically reduced over the last few years, so that 95% of secondary schools have a lunch break of an hour or less. Many are only 30 - 40 minutes.

But there seemed general gloom and despondency about what could be done. Schools MUST concentrate on achieving GCSE results. And with reducing resources for assistants, less children going home for lunch and mounting concerns about parents sueing if their children have accidents, the consensus is that playtime is inevitably being cut for our 11 - 18 year olds.

And this despite the mounting evidence from neuroscience, behaviour, mental health and others that play underpins creativity, learning, problem solving, teamwork etc etc...

These are all skills valued by employers - and that help young people enjoy their teenage years. But the quote that sticks in my mind from today is one delegate looking at that list and saying that most children going  through secondary have these character traits bashed out of them...

So what's to be done? Next bit of research is to find the secondaries that have defied the overwhelming pressure, and where they are perhaps seeing the benefits that the primaries are seeing that have invested in scrapstore playpods. 

Certainly today reinforced my belief in Ken Robinson's analysis of education in the UK that - despite some amazing, dedicated people- is fundamentally getting something wrong. And one thing that is wrong is the loss of children & young people's fundamental right to play.