School bans "unstructured play" during break times

[Kokeshi123]

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-56568473

Hackney New School claims to have eliminated bullying by banning unstructured games (football---or even things like skipping) by kids during their breaktimes, replacing them instead with poetry recitals and chess clubs.

Apparently the kids are allowed to get some exercise.... during PE classes, but sports are "more structured" and supervised.

Anyone else think this is really bad? Kids need a lot of running-around time. The amount of weight gained by a lot of kids in lockdown should serve as a rebuke to those who think that kids will get enough exercise by being nagged to exercise by adults; they need to blow off steam and run about playing their own games. I also think it's very important for children's social and emotional development that they get to direct their own activities sometimes, without being constantly micromanaged by teachers or parents.

Having chess clubs and supervised activities as well as the regular playground activities would be completely fine--but why ban kids from playing their own games?

It's always been the normal and natural thing to do ,for children to be rushing around playgrounds and playing their own games etc. There are always going to be a few, who sit out quietly,and maybe don't mix well,.or these days,addicted to phones.
I am always amazed these days, how schools make so many stupid rules now.. I have often read about the schools having the school lunch box police, checking the boxes,for anything they declare is bad food, !

As a parent when you're looking around surely that's one of the things you look at? Lunch time and after school activities, not just the Ofsted results?

A lot of the clubs at DC school run a few weeks and peter out - so they exist on paper and the school informs you about them all and you think oh great.

It's not becuase the kids don't turn up they often do- or they move location and half the group never get told where. I used to think it was my children and they were unlucky (or unwanted) - but I has a some casual conversations with other parents at pick - for ouside school activties -and they said the same.

Even one set up by a sixthformer stopped - not becuase they didn't attend but because they suddenly weren't allowed access to any rooms.

Secondary school break times were very miserable for me, I’d have loved more clubs to go to.

I used to be a bit embarrassed that I went to state secondary in a rough northern area and that I grew up in a rough place. As I get older I can now see that I was done a massive favour by doing so.

Honestly, our DC are growing up unable to find their way out of a paper bag. I'm so glad that I have not mollycoddled my DC and they can verbally stick up for themselves with other people. They have never been in trouble for anything, but don't take any crap off anyone.

We really are not doing our DC any favours with all this wrapping them up in cotton wool. We are creating a generation of children who will be unable to cope with anything life throws at them.

Isn't this the main reason they go to school, and thrown at H.edders all the time. "What about socialisation and playing with different kids"
Dear God, poor kids will have no social skills, at all.

My nephew is at this school, he likes it. There’s misinformation or misunderstanding on this thread.

Secondary kids. They aren’t running around or skipping, think it’s the wording of the article.

There is still football and other sports at the school, if you want to spend lunch playing sport you can. However, it’s supervised like a school football club would be.

There is an array of things to be involved in, to suit most people, and they still mix with their friends, chit chat, laugh. Most outside school activities are structured and they’re still enjoyable this is the same thing.

Unstructured break time is important whether they are playing or not.

Imagine how you would feel if you were on a work training day and then you had a "break" which was a directed activity in which you had to play chess, recite poetry or do something else that was led by a trainer/ supervisor.

It's not really a break, is it?

Agree with @nancywhitehead. What they've really done is replaced break time with something more "worthy". There are arguments for and against not having breaks in the school day (at least at secondary level).

How long is the lunch break ruby? Ours is 30minutes. A lot 9f state secondaries have massively shortened lunchvto reduce 'incidents'. It doesn't... the kids wolf food down, have a chat, died tge evoke time in a queue for lunch, play a very fast game of football or basketball, or start a fight...

Hackney New School claims to have eliminated bullying

I'd like to see the evidence and how robust it is. Is this the impression of the teachers, other staff, or the pupils?

If there was a survey/questionnaire, I'd like sight of the questions and information about the options and time period.

Ofgs, the typos! No one dies! That should say spend the whole of lunch in a queue....

@Mygardenisnotperfect

I would also wonder if this might just push the bullying to spill out on the way to and from school where teachers can supervise and intervene less.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Won't stop bullying before/after school or online. Kids can still get picked on in the corridor between lessons - I know my niece was.

@RedToothBrush

Lets not allow children freedom to explore their own fantasy (an important part of development) and form their own social connections on their own terms.

Lets just brainwash them and declare the state an authoritarian dictatorship where free thought and free choice are frown upon because doing anything thats not set for us is viewed as 'not constructive', where we don't think, we just do as instructed by authority, because god forbid we come across 'bad influences'.

Who oversees all these structured things? What happens to people who have been so institutionalised when they are kicked out the end of the system and find they don't have anyone micro managing their time and social interaction?

FFS in terms of child development how much is this fucking up the kids?

Perhaps they should structure their systems to actually deal with bullying properly - which occurs inside and outside the school rather than trying to create a system that doesn't prepare kids for the world at the end of it and pretends that if bullying occurs off the premises the school are off the hook and have 'dealt' with the underlying issues. Its just burying heads in the sand going 'la la la not our problem anymore'.

Jesus wept.

This

Awful and the beginning of the end imo. This guy writes loads on the importance of unstructured play and play as a human right:

There is still football and other sports at the school, if you want to spend lunch playing sport you can. However, it’s supervised like a school football club would be

Not every bloody thing a kid does needs to be supervised.

i dont recall playing at Secondary.. we were either queuing/eating, at some club or other, in the library doing homework, or walking around chatting about stuff.

Why does structured play mean less movement?

That was my thought too. Read the title and was thinking it won't be all bad and there could be a good thing there. Then I read replaced with "poetry recitals and chess" and I went "ooooh".

Now that's rough.

Everyone needs a break, children more so, even if it's structured or guided enough to avoid so many horrible break time incidents but they need to be allowed to let off steam somehow. I think it's really sad to make it about another brain activity lesson.

'Structured' breaks shouldn't have to involve imposing more lessons on them, they have enough of that already.

@Nettleskeins

The playground was a nightmare when I was at primary. I used to long for it to rain. Or for someone to at least supervise the skipping, climbing frame, hopscotch. Someone was always left out or ostracised. There were the popular groups who barred you if you weren't what they liked. This is aged 9 to 11 at its peak but building up before that. At sons secondary all the SEN kids spent their entire break in the SEN common room instead of getting fresh air...the teachers encouraged this...there was simply no way if negotiating the worst excesses of unstructured breaks. Tbh the best secondaries have lots of lunch clubs either sport or music or drama or even things like debating or science club. Nothing's worse than just being in an enormous mass of unfriendly cliques. You don't have to be SEN to experience this.

This was the first thing that entered my head too. I don't have SEN as far as I'm aware, but my social skills weren't the best when I was at school, and tbh breaks were a nightmare of exclusion and sometimes bullying.

Why do I get the impression that the people who find this disturbing were the "popular" kids at school for whom breaks were fun?!

I dreaded every break for at least the first two years of school. I just remember being very lonely.

I hated unstructured play at school, doesn't mean I lacked imagination or the ability to entertain myself outside of school. Also doesn't mean I lack resilience.

Not sure why people can't grasp that there are some kids who don't enjoy this. They should have options to avoid this too.

Its a very sloppy article. The school is a secondary school but it mentions skipping and learning Tennyson. Probably, a just turned 11 year old would prefer to do neither.

I think primary schools need unstructured play, but I can see how structured clubs and organised and supervised activities could be preferable in a secondary school. I have run ( to be honest fairly boring) lunchtime clubs before and had the vulnerable children lining up to get in.

They will be learning poetry. Reciting rote learned poetry is a real favourite of the free schools in London.

There was a famous time when Michaela kids yelled Kipling, I think, on a railway platform in a school trip. It has to be classical poetry. Cultural capital....

@nancywhitehead

Unstructured break time is important whether they are playing or not.

Imagine how you would feel if you were on a work training day and then you had a "break" which was a directed activity in which you had to play chess, recite poetry or do something else that was led by a trainer/ supervisor.

It's not really a break, is it?

Tbf, I don't think being supervised by and being led by are the same thing are they?

Perfectly possible to have a supervised activity that's led by the children with the adults just keeping an eye on to help manage any issues that can't be sorted out by the kids themselves.

This makes me feel even more relieved than I already did that my children are past their school years.

Unstructured play/free association is utterly, completely fundamental to the healthy functioning of human beings. Yet again we treat children like animals and subject them to a level of pressure and scrutiny that would be intolerable to adults.

These ridiculous academy hothouse schools - run by business leaders, not educators, and it shows - are a hostile environment for kids. There's a reason why some studies showed that teenagers' mental health actually improved during lockdown. Nobody else's did.

I think children need to be allowed to develop and design their own activities - its the one time during a school day where they aren't told what to do. Children need to be allowed to form their own friendships , design their own games and activities. Allowing them freedom allows them to develop control and reponsibity.