The Children's Outdoor Play Project, 2019-2021

Adventurous play is increasingly recognised as important for children’s health and development. Schools act as gatekeepers for children’s opportunities for regular, outdoor, adventurous play during breaktimes (recess), but often schools take a risk-adverse approach to break times, denying opportunities for risk and challenge during play. The Children's Outdoor Play project was designed to understand the barriers and facilitators that exist for adventurous play in schools with the aim of informing school-based interventions to increase children's opportunities for adventurous play at school.

We ran two parallel studies; one with parents and one with school staff working in schools in England. 1:1 semi-structured interviews were conducted to find out what parents and staff thought about adventurous play happening during breaktimes in schools. Our aim was to describe the core barriers and facilitators of adventurous play in English schools.