Opal Play

It has long been recognised that play is fundamental to a child’s health, happiness, development and well being. Research has also shown that children spend 20% of their time in school playing. This led staff to reflect upon how playtimes could be improved in our school and in the summer of 2025 our OPAL journey began.

The OPAL vision is that “every child in every school has an amazing hour of high quality play every day” and as a school we share this vision and recognise the enormous benefits play has on a child’s life.

We are developing the OPAL approach and working with our school community to improve our play provision. Our school grounds are impressive with two traditional play yards, animal area, nature garden, allotment, a MUGA, outdoor gym, bike track, forest school area and large field. Traditionally some of these spaces have been underused however through our OPAL project our school site is being transformed to offer the highest quality play experiences whatever the weather.

The school site has been divided into coloured zones and fundamental to our approach is that children have the opportunity to play wherever they want, with whoever they want. Children have the freedom to explore and play in their own imaginative ways, experimenting, problem solving and having fun using a wide range of available resources which are very different in each zone.

Our outdoor areas are continually being developed and offer an even wider range of play opportunities. The children love playing in all the different areas including rolling in tyres, creating dens, new recipes in the mud kitchen, digging in the sand, creating games with small world toys or zipping round the bike track on bikes. They are having fun and are developing life skills of teamwork, problem solving, communication, resilience whilst also developing their creativity and imagination.

The school acknowledges the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child, especially Article 31, and supports the child’s right to play.