For a huge innovation in education, look to the simple concept of play
4 min read
I am an educational psychologist – I work with schools to apply expert knowledge of child development to enhance learning and improve mental health.
There aren’t enough of us to go round and the Department for Education “innovatively” changed how they fund us, but those of us left in the workforce ensure we remain future-focused and up to speed with innovation in education, including the Sisyphean churn of the next revolutionary thing.
With this in mind, I want to tell you about an astonishingly innovative and effective activity that has been proven to enhance cognitive skills, increase retention of learning, develop social skills, improve emotional development, reduce anxiety, raise wellbeing and boost language. Oh, and it enriches physical health too.
The content of the activity tends to be more inventive than anything you or I could hope to conceive, and it surpasses the capability of any of the AI-enhanced, app-compatible, eye-movement-tracking, highly-marketable programmes that flood my inbox on the daily. Unbelievably, this extremely motivating, individualised, and enjoyable activity has little to no costs at all, with negligible equipment, staffing, or training needed.
The baffling thing, to me, is how unappreciated this activity is – to the extent that many schools are actively reducing it in favour of things that are less enjoyable, more expensive and less effective. Ofsted does not measure it, and schools are not incentivised to provide it. Mystifying!
It’s play, by the way. Letting children play is an extremely low-cost, high-reward intervention that supports not only learning achievement but mental health too.
Play is what children and young people naturally do when you give them some time and space. It is characterised as an activity without a fixed goal, self-chosen, and intrinsically motivated, best done with limited adult interference.
We fail to recognise that while it may look different for a toddler than a teen, it remains just as vital throughout all iterations of childhood. It enhances every aspect of development. But it has become increasingly hard for children to get good opportunities to play, and we are seeing the effects of that in the generational crises that government is called on to address.
This had begun to be addressed in the now sadly disbanded Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities inquiry into the impact of the built environment on children’s development and wellbeing, although the Centre for Young Lives’ Play Commission has taken up the baton somewhat.
The Inquiry heard evidence around the dwindling access to playgrounds and green space, the impact of housing design on a family’s capacity to provide play opportunities, and covered concerns over the multiple ways we kettle children into their homes, leaving only the internet as their playground. As a nation, we wring our hands over the dangers of screentime whilst dismantling all the climbing frames.
In schools, playtimes have been trimmed – or abandoned altogether – in favour of more lessons. This began with “catch-up tutoring” post-pandemic and has increasingly been normalised, with secondary schools routinely providing a break just long enough to scarf down a sandwich and visit the loo, and primary schools removing entire playtimes from the schedule. The extra teaching squeezed into the day can rarely make up for all that is lost when play is stolen.
Even when break times are preserved, many schools lack the space to offer genuine play. There are at least two schools local to Westminster that have no playgrounds at all, and thousands of children beyond here in schools with extremely limited space for play.
Supervised PE lessons in a local park might tick the exercise box but provide none of the other benefits of play.
Some educationalists argue for all-age, play-based learning, which in some settings feels like too radical a curriculum shift in this climate of technological, metrics-focused, structured pedagogy.
But how about we just give them their playtimes back? It’s not radical – but it is innovative.
