OPAL

We are excited to announce that Milton Park Primary School is about to start a programme to improve opportunities for physical activity, socialisation, cooperation, coordination, resilience, creativity, imagination and enjoyment through improved play.

The Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL) Primary Programme is the result of over 20 years of testing and development in over 800 schools. In 2018, OPAL won first prize in an EU-funded award for the best active school’s programme in Europe and two UK national playwork awards. 

OPAL is based on the idea that, as well as learning through good teaching, your children also learn when they play. As 20% of their time in school is playtime, we want to make sure that the time they spend playing is as valuable and fun as possible.

The reason the school is carrying out this programme is to:

• Improve physical literacy, which in turn will support educational attainment

• Develop social and relationship skills

• Improve child-led problem solving and self-risk assessment

• Make playtimes and lunchtimes more fun!

There are many proven benefits for schools that carry out the OPAL Primary Programme. They usually include: more enjoyment of school, less teaching time lost to disputes between children, fewer accidents and greatly improved behaviour. 

Play is not messing about, but rather enabling children to learn all of the things that cannot be taught, while also having 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 the school improves play opportunities for your children, you will find the school is asking you to support with donating resources and is making changes about how the children use the school grounds. They may use more of the grounds, for more of the year. Your children will get a bit messier, 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. Please see the table below for more information about what the school will do and how you can help with OPAL.

The school will be supported by an OPAL mentor for 18 months and there will be an opportunity to come and talk to him here at school. We will be running a lunch time stay and play with your child on 7th March 2025 at 11am. This allows us time to set up our OPAL playground at the beginning of the year, before we invite parents to come and see it! We will send out more information regarding this nearer the time.

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.

We are really excited about this project and hope that you will support us in our efforts to improve playtimes for all children. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to speak to your child’s class teacher.