Early years experts create guide to highlight importance of play

The Play Matters Guide 2025 highlights the need for children to have more free time and calls for them to experience unstructured play rather than ‘rigid academic instruction or excessive screen time.’

It highlights research-backed evidence for play and puts forward a case for play to be central to early years education.

The guide has been developed by a consortium of early years experts including David Wright, ambassador of Paintpots Nurseries, and Aaron Bradbury, principal lecturer for Early Childhood Studies, at Nottingham Trent University.

The foreword, which is written by children’s author and poet Michael Rosen, says, ‘Those of us who are educators have to help children play with what's around them and what we give them. They will discover the changes they can make, they will make meanings, and they will discover things about themselves, the most important of which is that they can discover possibilities. The world is not a fixed thing devoid of the possibility of change. They are not excluded (or should not be excluded) from the possibility of change. They are (or should be) part of the possibility of change.’