Time for play at school should be ringfenced, report urges

The Raising the Nation Play Commission, a year-long independent inquiry into why play is critical to the wellbeing of children in England, has published its Interim Report, ‘State of Play’.

The Commission was launched in June 2024 by its chair, entrepreneur and campaigner Paul Lindley OBE - founder of Ella’s Kitchen, the UK’s biggest baby food business. It is working in partnership with former Children’s Commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield’s Centre for Young Lives think tank.

The interim report reveals how, despite the immense benefits of breaktimes to children’s development and learning, play time has been squeezed out of the school day over a 25-year period. It analyses four national surveys carried out in 1995, 2006, 2017, and 2021, shared with the Play Commission, which show the significant decline in average total breaktime in minutes per day in England’s schools between 1995 and 2021.

The report shows how the youngest school children in England lost 23 minutes breaktime a day on average compared to their counterparts in 1995. The average total time dedicated to breaktime in a day fell by 18 minutes over the same period for older primary school children, and by 17 minutes for Key Stage 3 children.  

It also shows how breaktimes have fallen most sharply in primary schools in the most deprived parts of England. Schools with a higher proportion of children in receipt of Free School Meals have shorter breaktimes. While state secondary schools have seen a significant fall in breaktime, there has been no discernible decline in the time devoted to play in England’s private schools since 1995.

The report argues that an overbearing national curriculum and highly pressurised accountability system has led many schools and teachers to view breaktimes as nothing more than a loss of valuable teaching time.  It also warns that many schools are punitively withholding breaktimes from children for behavioural reasons.

The Interim Report also highlights how time spent playing outdoors has declined by 50% in a generation and fewer than three in ten children say that they play out on the street.
   
It also shows that at least 400 playgrounds, and probably more, closed across England between 2012-22.

The report makes a range of evidence-based recommendations to Government to reverse the loss of play time in schools, including calling on Government to establish the first National Play Strategy for England since 2008 led by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport. The strategy would set out a clear, long-term vision to ensure children can easily access and enjoy places to play in public, at school, and at home.

The report urges for new statutory Department for Education guidance to ringfence time within the school day for breaktimes and lunchtimes, and support for The British Psychological Society’s call for an extra 10 minutes of play to be restored to the school day.

It also calls for Ofsted to include play sufficiency – specifically time to play - as a measure of school performance to encourage schools to boost play in school time and reward those schools who value play highly.

It also calls for school teachers, staff, and supervisors to receive high-quality and mandatory play training to enable healthy and active breaktimes and playful learning.