The Family of Play...

For the fourth time in the space of a week, I’ve taken a phone call from an Early Years teacher who is strongly considering resigning from their setting. One common theme has emerged in their reasoning - the lack of school leaders who understand child development and are insisting on Key Stage 1 practice and readiness to be at the heart of their day.

It’s a bleak picture. Experienced and newly qualified Early Years teachers, passionate about play and age appropriate experiences coming to the edge of their well-being and feeling deflated enough just to walk away either to another school or from the profession altogether.

Our school leaders, and yes there are many exceptions thankfully, are existing within a landscape that has turned the screw on them, creating cultures within our schools that demand outcome, progress, measure and evidence at an increasing rate earlier and earlier in a child’s school life. This can only lead to one thing: the erosion of play. It’s a bitter irony that the one thing, play, the purest form of learning is being tossed aside in favour of ‘the illusion of learning’.

Play has an incredible power. It presents itself to us each and every day, the moment the children walk through the gates, play’s potential walks alongside them. Unfortunately, it’s as though we’re play-blind, refusing to embrace its potential, we shut it down and talk and point and show and fill and talk and demand and talk and put ourselves at the centre. I’ve said it before in blogs but it’s as though play is forced to stand in the wings, quietly tapping its feet in resignation.

So what’s to do? Must we bring ourselves to ill health, mental strain and unhappiness, fighting within our very selves, always feeling like we’re entering a battle? Must we forever be frustrated that no matter how loud we sing the song of play, adults around us, the policy makers and the didacts, drown us out with demand and expectations.?

Sometimes as professionals we have to draw a line around ourselves. When family suffers, when you find yourself on the brink then perhaps a choice has to be made. I love children but no child is more important than my own for example. I have huge respect for those professionals that see life in this way. It’s not a defeat, it’s a self-revelation.

My concern is that for every play advocate, there are two less play-based practitioners waiting to step in. Teacher training seems to focus less and less on Early Years, school CPD pushes child development to one side, parents seem oblivious on the whole. accepting the diet that is set before them.

And yet, there is hope. There is a movement out there working hard to sing in unison, to raise the profile of play. Some of this movement is based around Keeping Early Years Unique, some of it is more quiet, more localised. However it happens, it’s important that it does happen.

Play offers schools an unparalleled richness, a way of transforming communities, of shaping children with skills and spark in equal measure. It’s time to join the ‘Family of Play’ - key to this is parents. We need parents to demand play in schools. We need play to shine.

As another half term approaches, it’s my wish that you can be the one in your school to help play do just that - to shine and to shine bright...

Go gentle, but go brave :)