Life Based Learning ™
Delivering subject content through nine life themes
Benefits of playing out
MPs heard last week that doing more to help children play out and socialise close to home would be “a gamechanger” for children’s mental and physical health and wellbeing. At the moment, children’s needs are rarely taken into account despite the many benefits that playing out brings, said charity representatives and other expert witnesses who were giving evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into children and the built environment. Life-Based Learning emphasises the importance for children of daily physical activity, of playing sports and games, of unstructured play and of outdoor learning in general.
Announced in November, the inquiry – set up by the Select Committee for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – is examining how children and young people experience outdoor spaces in towns, cities and rural areas, and what policy interventions from local and central government could help to deliver streets, estates, villages, neighbourhoods and parks that enable children to enjoy active outdoor lifestyles and engage with others.
It is the first time that this topic has been the focus of a select committee. The committee chair, Clive Betts MP, said: “It’s important for children and young people’s mental and physical health that they have access to spaces to play and to socialise.”
Alice Ferguson, co-founder of the charity Playing Out, was one of those giving evidence to the inquiry. According to the charity, being outside with friends promotes physical activity, new skills development, socialisation, independence, a sense of belonging, resilience and happiness. Space close to home – doorstep play – is essential for this, says the charity. However, a combination of parent fear and a culture change means that children are “far more indoors, inactive, not with friends and on screens”.
Playing Out says that the main barriers to outdoor play include:
- traffic – streets are no longer “shared spaces”
- lack of official permission – play in outside spaces is often forbidden and even criminalised
- decreasing access to space – quality green/play space is unequally spread out, with access “a postcode lottery”
The charity says that children with the least are affected the most: “no gardens, in social housing, no money for extra clubs or classes, no car to get to destination parks, no adult available to take them”.
It is calling for “a whole-government, cross-departmental approach to consider children’s needs in everything from public health to transport, housing and levelling up, led by a Cabinet minister for children”. There should also be a statutory equalities group so that children have to be considered and consulted in decision-making.
Playing Out began as two friends on one street in Bristol in 2009 and is now “a national movement for change”. It champions a ‘play street’ model which has been taken up by 1,600 street communities all over the UK, supported by councils and local organisations. The charity argues that play streets promote children’s health, stronger communities, active citizenship, active travel and culture change.
Its website offers advice on how parents and carers, schools and nurseries, community activists and organisations, and councils and housing associations can get involved in promoting play. For example, it recommends that schools and nurseries:
- prioritise play and don’t cut break time
- consider making use of nearby green space
- open up school grounds for ‘stay and play’ after school
- ensure holiday schemes are based around free outdoor play
- ensure staff understand the importance of free play
- organise a school play street (a variation of their ‘play street’ model — short temporary road closures outside a school gate at the start and end of the school day, with volunteer stewards looking after the closure points)
Life-Based Learning emphasises the importance of daily physical activity for children, opportunities to take part in structured sports and games as well as unstructured play and adventurous play, and outdoor learning more generally.
Play is fun but it also brings with it huge benefits in terms of children’s development – intellectual, emotional, social and physical. Play develops self-awareness and social interaction skills, as well as promoting key life skills such as creativity and problem solving.
Sadly, opportunities for children to learn and develop through play are in decline. It is important that schools and communities – and those in positions of power, of course – address this, ensuring that there is quality play provision so that all children are able to enjoy and learn through play.
Image at the head of this article by hartono subagio from Pixabay.
