What if schools restored ‘proper’ lunch breaks and breaktimes?

In a world where our children are spending less time being active and more time looking at screens, playing outside feels more important than ever.

It supports children’s social interactions, boosting their ability to build friendships and growing their confidence and resilience. It even helps to improve fine motor skills.

The Youth Sport Trust has predicted that, if current trends continue, more than a third of children will fail to be active for even 30 minutes a day by 2035 - well short of the UK chief medical officer’s guidance of 60 active minutes.

Play in schools

And so inevitably, both inside and outside the schools sector, calls are being made to increase the time allowed for free play at school - mainly through the extension of break and lunchtimes. The idea is that if we allow children more unstructured social time, they will be fitter, happier and more settled in lessons.

I was of a similar opinion - until we thought hard about how to do it and conducted some trials.

The first thing you have to recognise is that primary school children don’t spend all of their break and lunchtime playing in the first place: some take longer to finish their lunch or snacks, while others opt to just sit down for the entire time.

So we are not starting with a level playing field: some children may take advantage of more time to run around, some won’t.

Behaviour benefits?

More free play time does not equal improved behaviour either. I have trialled extending break times myself at a primary school, in the hope that more free time outdoors would impact positively on behaviour. The result was disappointing: the opposite happened, and we found that longer periods of unstructured time at school led to more behaviour problems, not fewer.

Something else we realised during these trials was that the idea that children know how to play automatically and instinctually is a misconception. In fact, children need guidance and structure to learn how to play well, take turns and listen and respond to each other.

“Free play” doesn’t achieve this. So if you do extend breaks and lunchtimes, you need to think about structured play opportunities.

The price of supervision

Unfortunately, structured play needs to be well planned and properly resourced, which equates to a significant investment, taking into account the staff supervision and training, equipment and the time needed for pupils to really feel the benefit.

And time really is the biggest practical barrier for all schools looking at extending breaks and lunchtimes. Schools only have 32.5 hours a week.

At The White Horse Federation, we happily have a vast, comprehensive curriculum. This already includes life skills - relationships and health education - as well as core subjects.

Curriculum cuts

Adding, for example, an extra half an hour across lunch and breaktime could amount to losing the equivalent of several lessons a week, and perhaps even a whole afternoon of learning. Everything in our curriculum has clear value, just as it should, and there is no obvious subject or lesson we would want to cut back on.

So, while I recognise the arguments for more play, the sacrifices of providing it are rarely properly discussed.

The view I have come to is that perhaps the focus should be shifted to opportunities outside schools, in public spaces.

Many children would benefit from community provision in the form of safe public spaces, more parks, funded clubs and free or very cheap access to swimming pools.

Teachers across the country can already feel the impact of children spending more time inside. Parks are increasingly quiet, with far fewer children out cycling or playing together. In schools, many pupils are unfamiliar with the simple games that once defined childhood, such as hopscotch or traditional tag games, and teachers often need to explicitly teach these during breaktimes.

Societal role

But is it our job to remedy that situation?

Of course, we are doing everything we can to fit in as much as possible, as efficiently as possible. Pop-up playgrounds and swimming pools in Swindon are a good example of this; we can support pupils to develop these skills and, of course, fulfil curriculum requirements.

However, ultimately, all teachers would love for all children to arrive at school with the social skills to play and the space and opportunity to do so outside school, as well as in their breaks, so that we can focus on providing them with the most robust and exciting learning experience possible.

“Free play” in the form of longer breaks would not help us to achieve this ideal, but at our schools we will continue to focus on developing the whole child so that every pupil is well prepared for their future - academically, socially and emotionally.

Anna Willcox is senior executive headteacher at The White Horse Federation