Ava is in Year 4 and she hates breaktime. She hates lunchtime, too. And she is not really a fan of the time she spends in the playground before school, either - at least, that is what anyone monitoring the situation would conclude if they were to observe her.

Se prefers to stand on her own, mostly, keeping to herself. She is not unpopular in school generally but seems very withdrawn during breaks.

Could it be a result of her being out of school for so long because of the Covid-19 pandemic? Has she forgotten how to socialise in unstructured time? Should you intervene?

It’s possible that the coronavirus-related school closures will produce more children like Ava, but the truth is, children like her have always been a feature in primary schools: some pupils just seem to struggle in unstructured environments. Historically, schools have supported these students in various different ways - but, as we enter the new school year, are there any answers from research that can guide some form of best practice?

Fortunately, the question of how much teachers should intervene with students’ social interactions (or lack of them) at breaktime in primary school is one that sociologists have been looking at for years.

There is a consensus that some adult intervention at breaktimes may be wise. Diane Reay, a professor in the faculty of education at the University of Cambridge, says the academic evidence “shows how important it is for teachers to provide guidance, advice and support at playtimes”.

According to research conducted with 10- and 12-year-olds in 2015, 47 per cent of pupils say they have been “left out” by other pupils in the past month, Reay says.

“Most of this peer-group exclusion operates in the playground,” she says. “Schools as institutions have a duty to enable, encourage and develop a caring and supportive ethos. This obviously starts in the classroom but, if it has any depth and credibility, it also needs to extend to the playground as well.”

culture is key

This does not necessarily mean direct intervention - according to Reay, it actually starts with the culture of primary schools.

Currently, she says, schools convey “mixed, contradictory messages to children”.

“Work on PSHE and citizenship may be about responsibilities towards others, but it is undermined by the intense competition in primary classrooms,” she says.

“The hyper-competitive environment in many classrooms, often with a ‘winner takes all’ mentality, combined with pervasive setting and streaming that encourages a steep status hierarchy among pupils, work against caring, cooperation and support among children. So the problem is not simply one of playground interaction but the culture and values of the school and society more generally.”

Teachers would argue that such a culture was imposed on schools via the accountability systems and that they do as much as they can to counter it. They can’t do much about that accountability system other than lobby the government, but many will already be doing what Reay describes as ensuring “less focus on competition and the setting up of achievement hierarchies, and much more emphasis on cooperation, caring and helping each other”.

If you are already doing that, then what else should you be doing? Kristina Hansson is associate professor at Lund University in Sweden, and Barbro Bruce is an assistant professor at Kristianstad University, also in Sweden. They have conducted research into social interaction - particularly among vulnerable children - and pinpoint special educational needs and disability (SEND) as a key issue that teachers need to tackle.

“I do think that it is important that teachers are aware and observant of what is going on during breaks, in particular for those children who are at risk for difficulties, like children with speech, language and communication needs,” says Hansson. “Maybe not so much by directly intervening but by thinking about ways to optimise contextual conditions to encourage peer interaction.”

It is important, she says, to help children to create a “good circle” of supportive friends - something that “for most children is not much of a problem”, but which others might struggle with.

“If you have strong linguistic and communicative skills, you create positive conditions for your continued language and communication development,” she says. “Children with speech, language and communication needs may have difficulties making themselves understood; they don’t take initiatives for interaction and/or are not very responsive.

“As a consequence, they get less input, when what they need is more. Trying to encourage the children to meet and to take part in joint actions and interactions will increase their experiences of participation.”

Barbro agrees and adds that those with behaviour issues will also need to be handled carefully. She says that they will suffer if taken away from friendship opportunities as punishment, and that this action will exacerbate behaviour issues, not resolve them.

“If children are either often getting into trouble, or not active and often on their own, it is good if teachers can help to resolve conflicts or to encourage the child to take part in activities,” she says.

So, getting the right culture and addressing barriers such as SEND should be on every school’s list. But will attempts at direct intervention have any real impact?

“It is important to be careful here and not take over responsibility, to support children in learning how to solve the problems, not make them depend on you,” says Barbro.

Support can be “being a role model, by asking questions, being clear in communication” , she says, but it should not be about forcing children to play together or engineering very staged interactions.

“The aim is to support them in working this out themselves and be there as a resource until they can - and encourage them when they succeed,” she concludes.

If that sounds like a very structured approach to breaktimes, then that is not how it is meant: as those in early years will tell you, support and guidance do not mean an overtly structured experience for the child.

Instead, it should mean taking a child-centred view that provides opportunities for play, rather than dictating that play.

“If you have a situation where a school hasn’t given much thought to what it wants to get out of breaktime, and how it wants to support the children in that time, it ends up developing policies based on adult-focused agendas rather than children-focused agendas,” says Mariana Brussoni, an associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

Brussoni has published extensively on the role that encouraging “risky play” can have in encouraging children to learn and stay healthy, and she says it is important that, when children do have breaks, there are maximum “affordances for play” in their environment. “One of the easiest ways to do that is to put in loose parts [into your play equipment] - some crates and sticks and rocks and mud or water, those kinds of things - because with fixed play equipment, it’s only entertaining to a point,” she says.

“It can’t be moved and kids get bored with it quickly, whereas with loose parts, they can move stuff around and really let their imagination shape the play - so it’s really important to have those kinds of provisions.”

Policing or play?

If that sounds like a situation that would need additional policing, then Brussoni concedes that this is one way of looking at it. However, she says it does not actually have to mean more staffing.

“There is direct supervision, which is more of a policing role, saying things like ‘stop, get down, don’t do that!’ - basically enforcing rules,” she says. But you can also adopt “a play-worker type supervision, which is a concept that came out of the UK and the idea there is that you’re there to support the children’s play”, she says.

“Most importantly, it is the children’s agenda, not the adult agenda, that sets how that play should continue.”

Embracing the latter approach relies on teachers accepting the idea that children are “competent and capable”, and imbuing pupils with a sense that the staff have trust in them.

“Once they understand the basic rules around socioemotional principles - not bullying and that sort of thing - you need to trust that they are capable and competent to be able to make decisions,” she says.

“If you provide rich outdoor play experiences, then you are catering to kids who have different needs - perhaps they don’t feel like playing with other kids and want to hang out alone because they love to climb. If you have a diversity of affordances, then you can support those kids in their different needs.”

Overall, then, the instinct to intervene directly may be the wrong one: no teacher likes seeing a child left out, but trying to force the situation seems misguided. Instead, give the children the tools - physical as well as social and communicative - and the environment to play should be enough to nudge things in the right direction.

Chris Parr is a freelance writer

This article originally appeared in the 28 August 2020 issue under the headline “Tes focus on...Supporting isolated pupils”