EYFS Best Practice: In Schools – How OPAL is transforming playtime

Look around the outdoor area at Crawfords CofE Primary School in Haughley, Suffolk and it is equipped with large loose parts – lots of tyres, wooden beams, pallets, crates, tarpaulin – and busy, engaged children. They are problem-solving in the construction area, others are den-building, digging in a sand pit and working together to make mud pies, while children are dancing to music on a stage and dressing up or relaxing in a quiet, sensory area with their friends. Some children are even on the field balancing and running on top of big cable drums.

This isn’t the school’s Foundation Stage area but a typical break time for Key Stage 1 and 2 children, with all ages playing and learning together at the school, which adopted the OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) Primary Programme almost three years ago.

‘This is something that early years have been doing for a long time, but it is now being scaled throughout the whole school for every child to be able to continue,’ says executive head teacher Rob Francksen.

While those working in the EYFS have embraced the concept of learning through play and the value of loose parts play, there is commonly a big separation between play and learning throughout the rest of the school, with time devoted to either lessons or ‘playtime’. Break and lunchtime – which typically take up a fifth of the school day – are often overlooked and not planned for, a gap which OPAL, an evidence-based, strategic approach to improve school play, aims to rectify.

OPAL founder and director Michael Follett drew on his experiences as a playworker, teacher and school improvement officer to establish the community interest company in 2011 in response to demand from schools for help resolving issues at playtime – including boredom and low-level behaviour problems – along with a desire to improve the quality of children’s play experiences.

HAPPY AND FULFILLED

OPAL mentor and director of Outdoor People Cath Prisk talks about the ‘forgotten 20 per cent of the school day’ and how older children in primary schools are often engaged in football and other ball games, which can be a large source of conflict, or aimlessly wandering around.

‘How boring are our playgrounds when children will give up their precious few minutes of freedom – when they can think for themselves and do what they want – to complain about a graze and get a bit of blue paper with water on it?’ she questions. In fact, OPAL schools report a reduction in first-aid incidents during playtime. Prisk suggests these children are too happy and fulfilled during break time to be distracted by a small bump.

OPAL aims to give children the opportunity to engage in all 16 play types – including creative, dramatic, rough and tumble and exploratory play. ‘This does not just have an impact on children’s wellbeing and mental health but also their social skills and happiness at school. They are much more physically active overall too,’ says Prisk. ‘But more than that, there’s not just a third of the children chasing a ball and the others standing around. You’ve got every child engaged in something whether it’s fine small motor skills or large gross motor skills, and they’re not doing the same thing every day.’

Before embarking on the OPAL ‘journey’, children at Crawfords spent break times in a ‘concrete jungle’ with limited resources and few areas to retreat if overwhelmed, which resulted in behavioural issues, disagreements and children returning to class frustrated and unable to concentrate.

Francksen chose to introduce OPAL just before the pandemic as a panacea to an increasingly rigid education system and to support growing numbers of children with additional needs and problems with mental health and wellbeing. He regards it as even more important after two years of lockdowns, with children having had limited time to freely play outdoors, enjoy nature and socialise.

‘The whole Covid situation has confirmed the importance of children’s freedom, children’s voice, the opportunity to play and develop soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, team work and be happy, stimulated and engaged,’ he says.

VALUE FOR MONEY

Prisk refers to the programme as a ‘long-term transformational change’ in how the whole school addresses play ‘without spending a fortune’. OPAL costs schools £4,999 – with possible additional costs for adequate storage, developing the landscape and outdoor clothing, but limited outlay on other resources.

An independent evaluation (see Further information) highlights, ‘OPAL does not require large amounts of (central) funding, and many of the improvements it can engender can be achieved at little cost (for example, changing the rules about how children use open play areas in school grounds or making use of old or decommissioned school and household resources for play).

‘A range of funding sources has been used by schools, from school budgets to fundraising by parents and other local funding possibilities.’

It is estimated that most schools spend between £50,000 and £100,000 a year on staff supervising play. An investment that is not supported by any planned or evaluated approach.

Francksen says, ‘Often schools are employing quite low-skilled practitioners, not giving them any kind of training and saying, “Right, there’s the whole school, get on with it.” And they find that really difficult.’

LEARNING LIFE SKILLS

Often children at Crawfords do not use the resources as staff assume they will. For example, a long rope ended up being engineered into a pulley system over a tree and children worked together levering each other up and down. Francksen calls this the ‘hidden curriculum’ – the ability to gain confidence in risk management, self-control, conflict resolution, resource sharing and collaborative solutions – all important life skills.

‘It’s enabled the children to become far greater at critical thinking,’ he says. ‘We’ve seen a huge difference in children getting into problem-solving and not giving up. Children tend to give up quite quickly if the problem isn’t solved or there isn’t a quick answer, but now it’s not necessarily all about the outcome but the process.’

‘One SENCo was nearly in tears when she told me that she couldn’t believe the difference it was making to the children with neurodiversity issues,’ says Prisk. ‘Some children who are autistic or who have ADHD don’t want to be in the middle of a loud, boisterous empty playground. Now they can fit inside a box. So at the end of playtime they are satisfied and they can go back into class ready to learn.’

Francksen adds, ‘We’ve gone from a place where children were potentially unfulfilled to a place where they actually play.

‘Great play doesn’t happen. You have to plan for it, but now we can stand back and see how powerful it is that children have been given a voice and an opportunity. We have provided an environment that is inclusive, creative and we can now let the children get on with it.’

CASE STUDY: GILLAS LANE PRIMARY ACADEMY AND NURSERY In HOUGHTON LE SPRING, TYNE AND WEAR

Sited in one of the most deprived areas in Sunderland, 70 per cent of the children attending Gillas Lane Academy and Nursery are entitled to free school meals, compared with 22.5 per cent nationally.

‘We are determined to get everything right for the children and, because playtime and lunchtime are such a big part of the school day, we are determined to get that right for them too,’ says head teacher Emma Monaghan. Monaghan became head in 2017 and introduced OPAL the following year after researching the ethos, visiting a school already running the programme and deciding that it was a ‘really good, pedagogically sound resolution’ for the school’s cohort.

‘It’s one of the things that I’m most proud of having done at the school,’ she says. ‘When I started, there was a Key Stage 1 yard at the top and a Key Stage 2 yard at the bottom, both rectangles of Tarmac and the previous head teacher didn’t let anybody step on the field unless it was June or July. We gave children access to all the site in all weather.’

Monaghan now regards the school grounds as an extension of the early years outdoor area.

‘We know that variety of play [experienced in the early years] is what our children need, but unfortunately we can’t give them that in the school day because there is too much curriculum to get through. Instead we make sure they’ve got it at lunchtime, and what a difference it’s made,’ she says.

Monaghan believes OPAL is a ‘really therapeutic approach to play’ because children can play with whoever and whatever they want, which she feels particularly benefits the children referred from the local women’s refuge and those from disordered home lives. ‘Some of our children come from quite chaotic backgrounds and some of them have experienced great levels of trauma,’ she says. ‘Now that children can access the whole site, we will often see our new admissions seek their siblings out to check how they are getting on, which is just delightful to see.’

Introducing OPAL wasn’t without problems. Some parents and staff, including cleaners and midday supervisors, were resistant, and Monaghan acknowledges it is easier in summer because the school grounds are not as muddy.

‘Starting OPAL in September gave us a false sense of security,’ she says. ‘It was sunny and dry and the ground was nice. Then we got lots of rain and we couldn’t believe the amount of mud that was being brought in. I stood in the corridor and wondered what on earth I’d signed up for and staff were shaking their heads.’

They held a meeting to discuss how to tackle the mud. Children now stomp their feet on the way back to their classrooms to loosen mud, and mud monitors with dustpans and brushes have been appointed in each class. ‘Yes we do still have patches of mud, but as a school we were committed not to sacrifice the benefits of OPAL on the floor, which can be wiped clean,’ says Monaghan.

‘Think about the sheer amount of play value children get from mud and mud kitchens. The children love it – the best days can now be when it’s raining – so we knew we had to get it right.’

There were also parental complaints about children getting dirty. Some schools ask parents to provide waterproof clothing but, as a head that has looked extensively at ‘poverty proofing’, this was not something Monaghan was prepared to do.

‘For some of our parents, putting on an extra wash is the difference between deciding whether to put money in the electric meters or to buy food,’ she says. ‘We did not want it to become an inclusion issue where some children were able to access play and others weren’t.’

So the school conducted an audit of outdoor clothing and applied to a number of funding streams to provide seasonally appropriate outdoor clothing and wellies for everyone. Occasionally mud seeps through the outer layers and then uniforms are washed in school.

With hindsight, Monaghan wishes she had involved the lunchtime supervisory team more in the planning stages. ‘OPAL was a culture shift for our lunchtime staff who had to make a commitment to being outside in all weather when they had been used to being indoors at the slightest hint of rain,’ she says. ‘We worked really hard to change the culture through senior staff being out to learn and lead by example.

‘It has to be led by the top and part of your school development plan. Communication is key. Now we have regular meetings with the lunchtime staff and can fix annoyances before they become a problem. They are now 100 per cent on board and we’re all heading in the same direction, understanding and valuing the importance of children’s play.’

CLEVER RESOURCING

After paying for OPAL, the biggest investment for the school was £3,000 on a big container with patio doors. It is used for storing resources and as a first-aid station. Compared to spending thousands on a piece of fixed equipment, Monaghan believes this is an excellent investment because most of their resources are then donated for free.

Staff have become expert at asking for items that will otherwise be thrown away, such as big wooden cable reels from a local building site, pallets, discarded army uniform, plastic oil drums and boxing punch bags. ‘We’re always looking out for quirky things,’ says Monaghan.

An old donated caravan has been repaired and decorated to become a wellbeing centre on the school field. A kayak provided hours of fun along with a massive eight-man tent. ‘The tent was on its last legs but it gave the children three weeks of brilliant play until the wind finally broke it, and it cost us nothing,’ Monaghan says. ‘We’re not scared to put things in the bin when they finish their lifecycle.’

The school is especially proud of its slide made from a huge sheet of tarpaulin pegged onto a steep slope. ‘It gets better when it’s wet weather, and the children love flying down it,’ says Monaghan.

Halved oil drums are used as sledges, and a long, thick rope has been added for children to haul themselves up the muddy slope.

RISK ASSESSMENT

Staff conduct risk-benefit assessments with children at weekly play assemblies where they discuss what could go wrong with a possible new resource and whether the benefits outweigh the risk. Children then decide how best to use the equipment. For example, it was suggested that they may fall out of the barrel sledges if they stood up, so the rule is to sit down.

Previously, Monaghan felt children lost the ability to risk-assess after leaving Reception – for example, assess whether they feel safe to jump from a height – because they were no longer engaging in that type of risky play.

‘The children follow the rules because they have made them and they know they’re there for empowerment over their own play,’ she says. ‘Perhaps surprisingly, OPAL has massively reduced our first-aid issues. Previously children didn’t have the space to play and would land on Tarmac. Along with a massive decrease in first-aid is a massive increase in brilliant, positive behaviour.’

Monaghan adds, ‘I think it’d be a brave head teacher who would let visitors watch lunchtime play, but I’d do that any day of the week. When you look around you see all our children engaged in their learning and in their play and it’s gorgeous to see.’

What the OPAL programme provides

Schools joining the OPAL programme are supported by a trained mentor throughout 18 months to transform the way that play is thought about, planned for, resourced and staffed. The programme includes:

• Observation and audit meeting, covering 18 critical cultural and environmental conditions which are found to affect the quality of play, to gauge what changes are needed.
• Development and action planning meetings.
• Risk management training – with children involved in the process of managing risk.
• Playwork Essential training.
• INSET on play to inform the whole school community of the programme and bring together their agreed values and principles to form a play policy.
• Parents’ meeting, or ‘play day’, to inform parents of the changes and get them on board.

Staff also receive outdoor area design advice, resource documents and unlimited email support from play development specialists.

Further information

• OPAL
• OPAL research and evidence
• Outdoor People
• Creating Excellence in Primary School Playtimes: How to make 20 per cent of the school day 100 per cent better by Michael Follett (Jessica Kingsley)