“Childhood doesn’t end the day you turn five,” Ruth Lue-Quee said to me on the phone as she shepherded her son to the playground this half term. “Playing is what children are born to do. It’s innate in them. It is how they learn.” The former deputy headteacher’s petition to make play-based pedagogy a core part of the key stage 1 (KS1) national curriculum in England has garnered almost the required 100,000 signatures for debate in parliament.
Observe any nursery or reception class and you’ll see what she means: kids roaming freely, modelling wet clay encrusted in glitter, playing pretend kitchen, banging on drums in the music cupboard. They’re interacting in an organic, self-guided way, moving around, using their imagination and following their own initiative. This is how the vast majority of early years pupils spend their time learning. Yet the moment a child finishes reception and begins year one, the English education system essentially dictates that playtime is over.
