The shrinking world of children’s play
The sound is unmistakable, a continuous babble of noise, laughter, screams, shouts and curses. The noise from the school playground is unlike any other and for us adults it is good for the soul. The sound of children playing however appears to become less year on year as restrictions through health and safety, modern culture and the school curriculum eat away at important play time.
“If children don't play, their minds don't grow. Play is where they learn to make their own decisions, trust their own judgement, set their own targets. It's where they learn to get along with other kids, meet triumph and disaster, and then come home for tea. Adults can help by helping them find somewhere to play, sorting out the boundaries, being handy with the plasters if something goes wrong. But otherwise we should leave them to it!”
Sue Palmer (author of Toxic Childhood)
By Paul Cooper
The lunch hour myth
The length of time that children now have for break is diminishing.
In a study by Peter Blatchford & Ed Baines between 1990 & 1995 and later updated in 2006, lunchtimes have been reduced by around 30% and afternoon breaks have been scraped altogether in many schools.
A further 5% of schools quizzed in 2006 said they were planning to make further cuts in ‘play time’.
A recent report in the Times says that the standard lunch hour is now down to forty minutes in schools.
By the time children have eaten their lunch that leaves very little time for play.
Many of the top footballers learned their trade in the school playground and took steps to maximise playing time.
Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool and England midfield player in his excellent award winning autobiography explains;
“School held limited appeal: I sat in class, longing for play-time because there was always a match on in the playground. I loved dinner-time because it lasted an hour, which meant a longer match. I abandoned hot dinners as they wasted precious minutes. Eventually I asked my mother for packed lunches. Speed was vital at dinner- time. I ate the packed lunch while playing or wolfed it down running back into class.”
This incident would have happened in the late 80s, so if he had been born twenty years later the playground match would have been twenty minutes less or an hour and forty minutes less footie time a week.
The Irish international Paul McGrath who played for Manchester United and Aston Villa was brought up in an orphanage and their meanness with food meant there was more football time, “At school, the other kids had lunch; we just brought jam sandwiches from the orphanage. We kicked a ball while they ate.”
Playground games
Children have been playing street games for centuries, and many of these have found their way into the school playground. Games from the medieval times are still being played, handed down from one generation to the next. Some are modified, some forgotten and new ones invented.
Peter and Iona Opie in the 1960s travelled throughout the UK making a note of all these many games that children played and put them into the classic 1969 publication ‘Children’s Games in Street and Playground’.
Many of the games are still played today, although some have been banned on health and safety grounds. Favourites include Grandma’s Footsteps, What’s the Time Mr.Wolf, Stuck in the Mud, Tag and British Bulldog.
There are even pre-game games for picking sides such as Rock, Paper Scissors, One Potato - Two Potato and Dips.
There are also numerous ball games played in the playground with football the most common.
Some games have seasons while others are short lived by some sections of the playground. “When a tremendous craze for Jacks swept the playground in 1973 I asked the boys if they had tried playing. All of them nodded. ‘Did you like it?’ ‘Not enough fun in it,’ said one, ‘not enough action.’ Iona Opie observed in her delightful book, The People in the Playground.
It isn’t just the games, as there is also a rich culture of language, rhymes, jokes, riddles and sayings.
With less children being let out to play in the streets, the play time in the playground becomes very significant.
Banning ball games
Sarah Thomson from Keele University compiled a study in 2000 on playground games. Of the schools she surveyed, half had banned football from the playground.
Other ball games have been banned across the countries as well as tag and even just running in the playground.
In Bracebridge Heath Primary School near Lincoln, kiss-chase, along with other games that involve physical contact has been banned. Children are no longer allowed to even link arms.
Meanwhile a new ‘state –of- the- art’ city academy, school in Peterborough, costing £46.4 million, has no play ground.
Headmaster Mr McMurdo said the main aim of not having a playground at the school was to help children’s learning. He told BBC news: “This is a massive investment of public money and I think what the public want, is maximum learning.”
Mile Delap, the project manager for the new school said, “For a school of this size, a playground would have had to be huge. That would have been almost uncontrollable. We have taken away an uncontrollable space to prevent bullying and truancy.”
Meanwhile a mum whose fourteen year old son is about to attend the school, said that he was devastated he would not be able to kick a ball around at lunchtime.
Another city academy, built without a playground, the Unity on Teesside, and was reportedly modelled on a Tuscan village (?) was found by Ofsted to be failing.
The lack of a playground was contributing to ‘the negative attitude of the pupils’ so one was hastily built.
'However much children may need looking after, they are also people going about their own business within their own society.'
Peter & Iona Opie
Give Us Back Our Game conducted their own survey and found that out of one hundred primary schools across the UK, a third had banned football and other ball games from the school playground.
Of those schools that let children play football, many restrict children to a rota system so most classes play just once a week on a designated part of the play ground.
One has to understand that the playground is used not just by children wanting to play football, but more provision should be made for those that want to run around.
With obesity at alarming rates and one million children in the UK diagnosed with some kind of mental illness, the importance of play can’t be emphasised enough.
Playground voices
There is such a wide range of experiences from the GUBOG survey, some children are very frustrated with their school’s lack of understanding while other schools bend over backwards to give the children what they want.
Nine year old Jack from Scotland brought a small ball into his school playground last year and started an impromptu game (football has been banned from his school’s playground)
“I lost 15 minutes of Christmas Party time for playing football in the playground”
A double whammy for the unfortunate Jack.
One incident that highlights the passion children have for playing games on their own terms happened at a primary school in Gloucestershire after the headmistress banned football in the playground.
The children staged a demonstration one lunch time when over seventy children marched around the play ground chanting “We want our football, we want our football.” while swinging their school sweat shirts above their heads, the same way South American football fans swing their scarves.
The headmistress was furious and gave the ring leaders detention.
‘On the big wall the girls were playing two-balls and donkey in a lackadaisical fashion, and round the corner the boys were playing football in the traditional football area with whatever vaguely spherical objects they could muster: chiefly rolled-up gloves.”
Iona Opie – The People in the Playground
For others the playground experience was a positive one. Charlie Cooper now studying a degree in sports science at Exeter University says of his days at primary school, “We played football every break time in the school playground with a small ball, but Friday’s was the special day. As long as we wore our football kit, the school would let us play on the field, all year round. We would pass each other notes in class about what we thought would be the best teams. Those times were very special.”
Tony Whelan, Manchester United’s assistant academy manager U9s-U16s tells how important football in the playground was for him.
“You could not bring a ball into school but you could hire one, so all the kids would pool their threepenny bits, knock on the teacher’s door, pay for the ball and a game would begin. A typical day at school would be a session before the bell rang more football at lunch and break-time, followed by an hour after school before the school gates were shut.”
Children’s play
The school playground is probably the last bastion of childhood and childhood culture and should be maintained. We all have our own stories and memories of games that we played and mostly those are happy ones.
Now play and sport is led by adults for children. There are many very good coaches but they are not children anymore and can very quickly forget what it was like to be a six or ten year old.
You know it’s not working when a child tugs your sleeve and asks, “When can we play a game?”
Children can be brutally honest and we may need to give them more responsibility and empower them to think for themselves, give them space so they can be creative.
We don’t always have all the answers.
The sound is unmistakable, a continuous babble of noise, laughter, screams, shouts and curses. The noise from the school playground is unlike any other and for us adults it is good for the soul. The sound of children playing however appears to become less year on year as restrictions through health and safety, modern culture and the school curriculum eat away at important play time.
“If children don't play, their minds don't grow. Play is where they learn to make their own decisions, trust their own judgement, set their own targets. It's where they learn to get along with other kids, meet triumph and disaster, and then come home for tea. Adults can help by helping them find somewhere to play, sorting out the boundaries, being handy with the plasters if something goes wrong. But otherwise we should leave them to it!”
Sue Palmer (author of Toxic Childhood)
By Paul Cooper
The lunch hour myth
The length of time that children now have for break is diminishing.
In a study by Peter Blatchford & Ed Baines between 1990 & 1995 and later updated in 2006, lunchtimes have been reduced by around 30% and afternoon breaks have been scraped altogether in many schools.
A further 5% of schools quizzed in 2006 said they were planning to make further cuts in ‘play time’.
A recent report in the Times says that the standard lunch hour is now down to forty minutes in schools.
By the time children have eaten their lunch that leaves very little time for play.
Many of the top footballers learned their trade in the school playground and took steps to maximise playing time.
Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool and England midfield player in his excellent award winning autobiography explains;
“School held limited appeal: I sat in class, longing for play-time because there was always a match on in the playground. I loved dinner-time because it lasted an hour, which meant a longer match. I abandoned hot dinners as they wasted precious minutes. Eventually I asked my mother for packed lunches. Speed was vital at dinner- time. I ate the packed lunch while playing or wolfed it down running back into class.”
This incident would have happened in the late 80s, so if he had been born twenty years later the playground match would have been twenty minutes less or an hour and forty minutes less footie time a week.
The Irish international Paul McGrath who played for Manchester United and Aston Villa was brought up in an orphanage and their meanness with food meant there was more football time, “At school, the other kids had lunch; we just brought jam sandwiches from the orphanage. We kicked a ball while they ate.”
Playground games
Children have been playing street games for centuries, and many of these have found their way into the school playground. Games from the medieval times are still being played, handed down from one generation to the next. Some are modified, some forgotten and new ones invented.
Peter and Iona Opie in the 1960s travelled throughout the UK making a note of all these many games that children played and put them into the classic 1969 publication ‘Children’s Games in Street and Playground’.
Many of the games are still played today, although some have been banned on health and safety grounds. Favourites include Grandma’s Footsteps, What’s the Time Mr.Wolf, Stuck in the Mud, Tag and British Bulldog.
There are even pre-game games for picking sides such as Rock, Paper Scissors, One Potato - Two Potato and Dips.
There are also numerous ball games played in the playground with football the most common.
Some games have seasons while others are short lived by some sections of the playground. “When a tremendous craze for Jacks swept the playground in 1973 I asked the boys if they had tried playing. All of them nodded. ‘Did you like it?’ ‘Not enough fun in it,’ said one, ‘not enough action.’ Iona Opie observed in her delightful book, The People in the Playground.
It isn’t just the games, as there is also a rich culture of language, rhymes, jokes, riddles and sayings.
With less children being let out to play in the streets, the play time in the playground becomes very significant.
Banning ball games
Sarah Thomson from Keele University compiled a study in 2000 on playground games. Of the schools she surveyed, half had banned football from the playground.
Other ball games have been banned across the countries as well as tag and even just running in the playground.
In Bracebridge Heath Primary School near Lincoln, kiss-chase, along with other games that involve physical contact has been banned. Children are no longer allowed to even link arms.
Meanwhile a new ‘state –of- the- art’ city academy, school in Peterborough, costing £46.4 million, has no play ground.
Headmaster Mr McMurdo said the main aim of not having a playground at the school was to help children’s learning. He told BBC news: “This is a massive investment of public money and I think what the public want, is maximum learning.”
Mile Delap, the project manager for the new school said, “For a school of this size, a playground would have had to be huge. That would have been almost uncontrollable. We have taken away an uncontrollable space to prevent bullying and truancy.”
Meanwhile a mum whose fourteen year old son is about to attend the school, said that he was devastated he would not be able to kick a ball around at lunchtime.
Another city academy, built without a playground, the Unity on Teesside, and was reportedly modelled on a Tuscan village (?) was found by Ofsted to be failing.
The lack of a playground was contributing to ‘the negative attitude of the pupils’ so one was hastily built.
'However much children may need looking after, they are also people going about their own business within their own society.'
Peter & Iona Opie
Give Us Back Our Game conducted their own survey and found that out of one hundred primary schools across the UK, a third had banned football and other ball games from the school playground.
Of those schools that let children play football, many restrict children to a rota system so most classes play just once a week on a designated part of the play ground.
One has to understand that the playground is used not just by children wanting to play football, but more provision should be made for those that want to run around.
With obesity at alarming rates and one million children in the UK diagnosed with some kind of mental illness, the importance of play can’t be emphasised enough.
Playground voices
There is such a wide range of experiences from the GUBOG survey, some children are very frustrated with their school’s lack of understanding while other schools bend over backwards to give the children what they want.
Nine year old Jack from Scotland brought a small ball into his school playground last year and started an impromptu game (football has been banned from his school’s playground)
“I lost 15 minutes of Christmas Party time for playing football in the playground”
A double whammy for the unfortunate Jack.
One incident that highlights the passion children have for playing games on their own terms happened at a primary school in Gloucestershire after the headmistress banned football in the playground.
The children staged a demonstration one lunch time when over seventy children marched around the play ground chanting “We want our football, we want our football.” while swinging their school sweat shirts above their heads, the same way South American football fans swing their scarves.
The headmistress was furious and gave the ring leaders detention.
‘On the big wall the girls were playing two-balls and donkey in a lackadaisical fashion, and round the corner the boys were playing football in the traditional football area with whatever vaguely spherical objects they could muster: chiefly rolled-up gloves.”
Iona Opie – The People in the Playground
For others the playground experience was a positive one. Charlie Cooper now studying a degree in sports science at Exeter University says of his days at primary school, “We played football every break time in the school playground with a small ball, but Friday’s was the special day. As long as we wore our football kit, the school would let us play on the field, all year round. We would pass each other notes in class about what we thought would be the best teams. Those times were very special.”
Tony Whelan, Manchester United’s assistant academy manager U9s-U16s tells how important football in the playground was for him.
“You could not bring a ball into school but you could hire one, so all the kids would pool their threepenny bits, knock on the teacher’s door, pay for the ball and a game would begin. A typical day at school would be a session before the bell rang more football at lunch and break-time, followed by an hour after school before the school gates were shut.”
Children’s play
The school playground is probably the last bastion of childhood and childhood culture and should be maintained. We all have our own stories and memories of games that we played and mostly those are happy ones.
Now play and sport is led by adults for children. There are many very good coaches but they are not children anymore and can very quickly forget what it was like to be a six or ten year old.
You know it’s not working when a child tugs your sleeve and asks, “When can we play a game?”
Children can be brutally honest and we may need to give them more responsibility and empower them to think for themselves, give them space so they can be creative.
We don’t always have all the answers.
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