St Gregory & St Patrick's Catholic Infant School

What is OPAL?

Our School has started a programme to improve opportunities for physical activity, socialisation, cooperation, coordination, resilience, creativity imagination, and enjoyment through improve play. 

In what ways, if any, do you think you benefited from playtime? Thinking about your own childhood, what did you like playing at school or at home? Children today don’t have the same freedoms we once did, so we want to give children back time to really enjoy and learn from play.

The OPAL Outdoor Play and Learning Programme is the result of 17 years testing and development in over 250 schools.

In 2018 OPAL won first prize in an EU funded award for the best active school’s programme in Europe.

It is based on the idea that as well as learning through good teaching, your children also learn when they play, and as 20% of their 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.

Why are we following the OPAL programme?

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 6 hours
• Average outdoor play time per week 5 hours
• Percentage of UK children who only play outdoors with other children at school is 56%

There are many proven benefits for schools that change playtimes this way.

They usually include: more enjoyment of school, less teaching time lost to disputes between children,

fewer accidents and greatly improved behaviour. 

How can parents help?

Play is not messing about.

It is the process evolution has come up with to enable children to learn all of the things that cannot be taught,

while also having so much fun. There are certain things children must have in order to be able to play.

These include:

• Having clothes that they can play in.

• Having things to play with.

• Having a certain amount of freedom.

As we improve play opportunities for your children, you may find us asking you for resources and also

making changes to the school grounds and how children use them.

They may use more of the grounds, for more of the year. 

Your children may be exposed to more challenges and have greater freedoms to play where,

with whom and how they like. The experiences the school is fostering are essential for children’s physical

and mental wellbeing and are in line with all current good practice advice on health and safety,

wellbeing and development. 

If you would like to learn more about the OPAL Primary Programme, please have a look at the OPAL website

(www.outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk), where you will find lots of useful information

and several videos about the programme.