Schools with No Playgrounds or Outdoor Space

[alanmckinney]

I am a father two four children, two of who are in first school.

I recently found out (through our school wanting to build classrooms on the playground and us campaigning for the council to buy adjacent land) that schools DO NOT need to offer any outdoor space to their children. AND even worse many (especially in London and other urban areas) don't.

New free schools can even set up in office blocks! This is down to a relaxation in legislation in January 2013 to allow free schools who struggled to find locations to provide enough space to set up pretty much anywhere.

So I have started a petition jointly with the charity Learning Through Landscapes to ask the government to revise it's legislation or introduce new legislation that stipulates the amount of outdoor space schools must provide for their children.

If you have children in school or will do in the future, if we don't do something about this we will have a large number of schools with inadequate or no outdoor space at all. Where are your children going to play, exercise and do PE? Most likely by getting on a bus and going to the local high school or leisure center cutting into classroom time.

Please show your support by having a look and signing the petition here:

www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-uk-government-stop-new-schools-being-created-without-any-outdoor-space-for-children-to-play-and-learn

If we can get 100,000 signatures the Government will consider addressing the issue in Parliament.

I don't see that it's a major problem to be honest. I went to a primary school in London and we walked to a local private park every lunchtime. We also made use of some of the bigger London parks for things like sports day. I actually think the walk to the park every day was a good thing for us, certainly much better than it is for children nowadays who are driven to and from school each day but have a playground.

As a child, I didn't even realise that some schools had their own playgrounds, and now looking back, despite working in a school that has a lovely playground and a great big field, I don't think I missed out.

I totally disagree with WooWooOwl and think outdoor space is so important. I think 'natural' outdoor space- grass field, woodland area etc is ideal.

When I think how the kids are after a couple of days of wet play I cannot even contemplate that being the norm. They are stir crazy.

God I am so glad my kids schools have big playing fields, we actually looked at one school that just had a small playground and no grass, we did not choose it mainly because of this.

My kids absolutely need to get out and run around at break and lunchtime, their behaviour and ability to focus and work well in class is impacted if they don't do this.

My kids primary has outdoor classrooms as well.

I think this is an important issue.

Funny how there is strict legislation to prevent the selling off of school playing fields now yet a new School can be built with no playground.

Walking or getting transport to other places for playtime and sports etc will impact inter school day and the amount if time they get to play and do sports

My kids often get extra people or lessons outdoors whenever it's dry/ nice weather. They had an Easter egghunt the other day and hold fetes etc in the playground.

Hmmm and are these the same schools Gove wants kids in from 8until6?

It beggars belief.

Will sign and share.

I think it's fine if other outdoor space. Our children will go to a school in London with little outdoor space, however they have use of a private pool and Hyde park daily

Children kept indoors from 9-6.. doesn't bare thinking about, also not healthy re vitamin d etc and children need exercise, don't they say minimum if two hours a day physical activity for children?

Lots of london schools have been very imaginative with playgrounds on roof tops. I feel outdoor space is essential but we need to think vertically (rather than laterally.. or least we think laterally in an abstract sense of going up rather than out.)

rooftop playground images

I think that outdoor space is important.

How much freedom can kids really be given in Hyde Park??

Nowadays I can see that it will be very different, but when I was a child, back in the days where child protection and safeguarding weren't paid as much attention, we were very free in Hyde park. Squirrel hunting was a lot of fun, but I can imagine that the stress levels of our teachers trying to keep hold of us ran very high!

Forgot to say that we had a roof top garden as well, and two big sports halls.

Woowoo, I find your comments out of touch and pretty outrageous.

I work in tower hamlets, one if the most deprived boroughs in London. Most of our pupils live in very overcrowded flats (5 children, 2 adults in 1 and 2 bedrooms). There are many children whose ONLY opportunity to run and have Soave is at school. Walking to a nearby space would be totally unacceptable.

We have children who arrive at nursery aged 3 with the gross motor skills of 12-20month olds.

We also have a free school on our door step built in an old office block. It is a secondary school. They have daily pe provision which children have to travel to at various sites. This is at the end of a full school day. This brings many, many draw backs.

I urge you to sign the petition!

There are lots of roof top play grounds in our locality. Not as good as the real thing but a brilliant compromise.

Woohoo, Hyde park is something. My students local parks are vandalised with used condoms and other nasties frequently lurking. The very least we can do for our children is offer them a safe, appropriate play space at school.

Charles - Hyde park is huge. Plenty of freedom. We go in virtually every day and mine climb trees, play poo sticks, cycle bikes, run, football, rounders. Far larger than most playgrounds anywhere.

Tbh school is 6 hrs long. Even if there really isn't any outdoor space there is many more hours a day that parents can take children out. Ours will have 30 min walk each way so 1 hr walking, plus 3pm-8pm ish daily to run in parks/ swim/ do everything they do now.

Signed and shared

Not all parents are available after school to take their children to parks. In some families, if both parents work then their children, might be in after school clubs from 9-6 pm each day (or even 8-6 if they do breakfast club too).

School is a substantial part of a child's day, and it honestly shocks me that anyone could consider a school having little or no outdoor space is appropriate. I've signed and shared.

Signed and shared.

Done.

I crossed a potential school off the list because it only had a playground instead of a playing field. Outdoor space is also an alternative place for learning. I loved measuring the playground or investigating leaves on the trees. So much easier to do it with just a 2 min walk from desk to playing field than having to leave the school site. One teacher can supervise on the schools premises but they need more adults if they're going off site.

about to sign - outdoor space provides so many opportunities, learning, sport, science, nature, relaxation, maths as has been mentioned, listening to outdoor sounds, fresh (well outdoor) air, less claustrophobic feel etc.

My children are lucky that they do have playgrounds but I always feel sad they are just tarmac and there is no grass (or even fake grass), just a couple of trees and a few planters. It looks so uninspiring although the school do try and there are a couple of climbing frames and they give them stuff to play with at break. I know they are lucky to have the space at all but I am always aware that whilst we have a little garden the majority of their friends are in flats, not big blocks with outdoor space but little flats with just a car park and no garden or the garden belongs to one flat and it isn't theirs. With no cars they are limited with where they could go, we do have some parks but dodging needles and the homeless does rule many of them out if you have kids.

Mammadiggingdeep, my comments may be out of touch when it comes to your experience, but they are based entirely on my direct experience of being at a primary school with no playground 20-30 years ago.

Your experience is of course entirely valid, but if you have children starting school so far behind on their gross motor skills, then that is down to bad parenting! I appreciate that's not the children's fault though, and they do deserve outside space, but I don't see why walking them to a nearby space would be totally unacceptable.

I think the problem you are dealing with is more that you are in a deprived area with all the problems that go along with that, it is not directly that the school doesn't have a playground. There is a valid argument for your students to have access to a safe outdoor space, but that doesn't make it a pressing need for all children. I would have thought that especially in London, the need for school places at all takes higher priority than making sure that all their schools have their own playground.

There are ways around schools not having a playground so that it isn't at all detrimental to children, but that is dependent on their parents doing some decent parenting.

All I can say is that it never affected me in a bad way at all growing up in London with a tiny yard and a school with no playground. The same is true at least of the people I still know who went to the same primary school as me.

Artandco I wasn't talking about whether there would be space at Hyde Park- more the opposite TBH. Think of yourself as a Teacher. Usually 2 or 3 adults will supervise 100+ children at playtime. How could you keep an eye on them all in Hyde park? There would have to be so many rules about what they could do and where they could go. The adult ratio would have to be MUCH higher so that would reduce the amount of time each child could play out. What if a child or little group decided to ignore the rules and sneak off? How would you stop the general public mingling freely? The adults would have to be monitoring so closely it would hardly be freedom for the children.

It's great to see this has sparked debate. Thank you to those who have signed the petition so far!

The point of our petition is to ask that new schools are created with adequate space. There will always be a growing demand for school places and many existing schools will have no options to expand to meet this. But where new schools are concerned, I don't think it unreasonable that they should be providing the outdoor space our children need so much.

There are solutions that existing schools with little outdoor space can use to enhance the space they have. The charity we are running the petition with (Learning Through Landscapes - www.ltl.org.uk) are doing a very good job at addressing this. We also have some other avenues we are exploring that existing schools might take to obtain more land for playgrounds and outdoor space.

We as parents need to do as much as we can to protect our children's outdoor space.

Please do sign the petition:

www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-uk-government-stop-new-schools-being-created-without-any-outdoor-space-for-children-to-play-and-learn

Thank you!

Charles - I have no idea how they so it but there are always groups of school children in the park playing cricket/ football or whatever. There are fairly big seperate areas so in assuming staff stand in the edge and kind of herd them in.

It's also generally the private schools that have no playgrounds as in large houses rather than 'school buildings'. The class sizes are often smaller and more staff

Like I said this is what my ds will do from September.

A PE lesson/ games session where everybody knows what they are supposed to be doing is totally different to free play.

I think children, even the big kids, need to have time for free play in school. Time where they can safely explore their environment and invent their own games. This would be very difficult to allow for in a big, open, public space.

It's not just London. Mine attend village school in Devon, with only a playground, no field. Everyone thinks it's fine, but I despair. Lunchtimes should be spent running on a field, building dens out of cut grass, and making daisy chains. Not crammed onto small playground where year 6 play football and everyone else has to stick to the perimeter.

I choose the kids primary school mainly due to its large adjacent playing field, 2 big playgrounds and small pool. There was a choice between it and a school with a small playground and no field, but slightly better results. I work and the kids are at school or in pre/ after scool care from 8-6. By the time we are home and have had some food, done reading and homework, it is time for bed. No time for out door play most week days, though we do lots at weekends. Luckily the school has some sporty clubs and the kids attend after school, giving them even more out door play, and the after school club is based at the school, and again uses the field and playgrounds extensively. I would hate the kids to attend a school with no outside space, it would make life much more difficult, as it is they get lots of exercise, which is great. When DS was in KS1 the teacher realised that the days he got into trouble and was badly behaved were invariably the rainy days when there was no outdoor play. Outside play is so important.

This is such an important issue. Obviously there are plenty of parents who can take their children out to play somewhere after school but plenty of parents who can't/won't.
We do need more school places especially in town centres but that should not come at a price of losing out on outdoor free play. Children learn so, so much from this and to deny them that opportunity will create so many problems for a whole generation.
If a school has access to a beautiful clean park free of strangers then that is amazing but there are very few of those about and travelling to them will eat into either playtime or lesson time. My children luckily have a park opposite the school where they can have some pe lessons and we can take them to after school but I certainly wouldn't be happy with them having a their playtime out there.
I have signed and shared this petition and would urge others to do the same.