OPAL

What is OPAL?

This year, we are very excited to be starting our OPAL journey to improve the quality of play that children in our school experience each day. OPAL is an award-winning, mentor supported school improvement programme that addresses all the areas that schools must plan for to strategically and sustainably improve the quality of play opportunities. OPAL is based on the idea that, as well as learning through high quality teaching, children also learn when they play. As 20% of children's time in school is playtime, we want to make sure that this amount of time (equivalent to 1.4 years of primary school) is as good as possible.

One reason we are carrying out this programme is that childhood has changed, and many children no longer get their play needs met out of school.

Average screen time per day is six hours.
Average outdoor play time per week is five hours.
Percentage of UK children who only play outdoors with other children at school is 56%.

The kind of play you will see developing at our school:

Creative and open-ended ways to play outside with upcycled materials and natural loose parts.
Opportunities for children to take responsibility for their play.
Outdoor play in all weather and all seasons.
Risk-benefit approach to supervision which allows children to experience managing risk in their play.

The kind of approaches the school will be taking to play:

We supervise and support play that is challenging, creative, and child-led; we supervise play with an understanding of respect, trust, and support for children.
Play is a right not a privilege; we protect all children’s right to play and ensure that playtimes and access to the outdoors is not a privilege
We will play in rain, snow, mud and sunshine; we will promote all weather play and have resources in place for children to be able to get outside excideplay in all weather.

The first change we have implemented in the Autumn term is introducing the mixing of playgrounds so that children across the whole school can play with more of their peers with access to more space and more equipment.

Amazon have been extremely generous with donations. Olympia's mum very kindly set up the connection and children (and staff!) have been unboxing excitedly.