INTRODUCTION
Too often, for adults, teachers, risk-averse institutions and school systems, play appears as something problematic: risky, unproductive, difficult to manage and almost impossible to measure. The article challenges this view by pointing to the increasingly pernicious marginalisation of play and to the risks this represents for children and for society more broadly.
To do so, it begins with an analysis of the role of play in education and of the pedagogical traditions that have taken play seriously. It argues that play is one of the ways children make sense of the world, test ideas, build relationships, practise creativity and develop agency.
The article then considers why play should not be confined to early childhood, but should become one of the lenses through which education itself is understood. In this sense, it connects play to pedagogies that place experience, self-direction, social learning and discovery at the centre of educational life.
Finally, the article reflects on the practical tools and reforms that schools can put in place to rescue play within education: more time, richer environments, better adult preparation, stronger outdoor provision, a more playful curriculum and a renewed trust in children’s capacity to learn through play.
The misunderstanding of play
The first problem that we face when discussing play is somehow linguistic. We often use the word “play” as if it means something light, optional or secondary. “Go and play” can sound like “go away until the serious work begins.” Yet the deeper pedagogical tradition has never treated play as trivial. Even Plato understood that play is not outside education: he argues that children’s earliest games shape their future habits, dispositions and relation to civic life (D’Angour, A.,2013). It is not surprising that education (“paideia”) has the same Greek root as children (“paides”) and play (“paidia”).
There is a consistent pedagogical tradition that points to the fundamental aspect of play as a pedagogical foundation. Play is considered one of the most important ways children make meaning, test reality, regulate fear, practise relationships and take possession of the world. In other words, it is a way of being and a rehearsal for becoming.
Vygotsky (1978) showed that play creates powerful developmental possibilities because children act beyond their immediate level of competence, using imagination, language and rules to reorganise reality. Similarly, Bruner (1972) linked play to flexibility, problem-solving and the capacity to try out possibilities without the full pressure of real-world consequences.
In the seventies, many pedagogues made this argument more explicitly and started worrying about the consequences of the decline of play. It is the case for Scarfe in Play is Education (Scarfe, 1962), while Bettelheim placed play inside the emotional and intellectual life of the child, not outside it (Bettelheim, 1972).
Peter Gray gives this argument contemporary force. In his work on play and hunter-gatherer societies, he argues that play should not be understood mainly by its outward appearance, but by the child’s agency within it: it is chosen, directed from within, carried by intrinsic interest, shaped by rules, open to imagination and experienced in an alert but non-stressed state (Gray, 2009). Put simply: play is how children make sense of life and themselves.
Gray’s account of hunter-gatherer childhoods is useful not because modern schools should imitate pre-agricultural societies, but because it reminds us that, for most of human history, children learned through observation, exploration, peer culture, mixed-age play and participation in meaningful community life (Gray, 2009, 2013). Education, in historical terms, was strongly based on play.
Bob Hughes pushes the argument further. He warns that adults can damage play precisely while trying to support it, especially when they manage, interrupt or reshape it according to adult agendas (Hughes, 2015). His idea of “wild play” does not simply mean play in wild places. It means play that has not been “colonised” by adults.
For schools, these considerations might sound uncomfortable, because much of what schools call play is actually more an adult-designed activity, supervised movement, or a “fun activity” with hidden assessment criteria. Those can be useful and enjoyable and can teach some lessons to children, but it is not the same as children free play, where they own the rules of the game undisturbed. Real play is chosen, shaped and negotiated by children. It is messy, physical, imaginative, social and unpredictable.
The pedagogy of play
Arguing for play does not mean arguing for adult absence. But neither does it mean giving adults endless permission to enter, steer, assess or improve children’s play. The adult task in this sense is really difficult, as adults must protect the conditions for play without taking ownership of it.
Elizabeth Wood’s work on the pedagogy of play is very useful in this sense, because it develops and puts words on this tension.. She argues that adult’s role is not to become the author of the play, but the guardian of its possibility. A pedagogy of play includes how adults design environments, provide resources, observe children’s interests, support language and make careful decisions about when to intervene and, just as importantly, when not to (Wood, 2009).
A strong pedagogy of play asks indeed teachers to become designers of conditions rather than directors of children’s actions. The adult protects time, prepares space, offers open-ended materials, notices what children are trying to do, and resists the temptation to turn every moment into a lesson. Intervention should be rare, respectful and necessary: to protect safety, prevent exclusion, offer language when invited, or enrich the environment without stealing the narrative.
Wood also warns us that when the adult takes over, play becomes performance. When every block tower becomes a maths opportunity, every puddle a science objective, every den a literacy prompt, the child’s world is occupied by adults and this might block the fantasy, imagination and the authentic role of play for children’s development.
Teachers should be trained to know how to navigate and recognise this subtle line of observation, support without intervention.
Following on the arguments of Woods, Nilsson, Ferholt and Lecusay (2018) sharpen the point by challenging the false divide between play and learning. Early childhood education often treats learning as what happens when teachers teach, and play as what happens when children are released from teaching. But that division is very far from the reality of “how children actually learn”: Drawing on Vygotskian theory, they show that imagination and reality are not opposites. Children do not leave reality when they play; they reorganise it, test it and stretch it. In this sense, the child at play is not outside knowledge. In this sense, yhe adult’s responsibility is to make sure there is enough time, space, trust and material for that to happen and then to have the wisdom not to interrupt it too soon.
The ecology of play in school
Besides, many pedagogists argue for the fundamental role of free play in children’s development, the reality in many schools is that play is reduced to a narrow space between lessons, a quick “outdoor time” or a moment of “letting off steam.”
We should in this sense remember that play has many forms, and each form opens different developmental possibilities.
Bob Hughes’ taxonomy reminds us that play is not one thing. He identifies 16 play types: from mastery, exploratory and object play to fantasy, symbolic, social, locomotor and rough-and-tumble play. Each type opens a different developmental door. Hughes argues that these forms of play are “distinctly and subtly different,” and that access to them matters for children’s healthy development (Hughes, 2013).
Schools that take children’s wellbeing and positive development seriously, should make room for all these play types. Moreover, schools should also be mindful that the four key conditions of play are always respected: time, environment, resources and permission (Scott-McKie & Casey, 2017). Indeed, children need enough time to become absorbed in the play. They need spaces with variety and challenge. They need open-ended materials that stimulate creativity. And they need adults who permit trial, error, risk, collaboration and invention.
At the moment, all schools that are questioning why children lack resilience and are anxious, should first and foremost reflect on the quantity and quality of play they allow, and work to support the development of a. richer ecology of play.
Play is not only for little children
One of the strangest assumptions in education is that children grow out of play. However, as we saw before, play is not simply an early-years method, it is a developmental language and therefore also a form of experiential education. ( see also Leather, M., Harper, N., & Obee, P. 2021).
Unfortunately, opportunities for play tend to decrease sharply after the early years, through primary school and into secondary school. But as children grow, play does not become less important; it becomes more socially, emotionally and intellectually sophisticated.
Gray argues that the best condition for humans to learn is through self-directed activity, exploration and age-mixed peer culture (Gray, 2009, 2013). His point is especially important beyond the early years: older children need opportunities to practise autonomy, responsibility, social judgement and competence in real situations. As Sutton-Smith puts it: play is a complex cultural and developmental activity through which we explore identity, power, risk, imagination and social meaning (Sutton-Smith, 1997).
Adolescents need play even more because they are working out identity, risk, belonging, status, attraction, humour, courage and competence. If play in early childhood supports language, imagination, self-regulation and social learning, then play in later childhood and adolescence supports the more complex versions of those same capacities: identity formation, peer negotiation, embodied confidence, creative risk and civic belonging.
Secondary school needs therefore to have a serious place for play, more independence, more challenge, more social space, more creative improvisation and more trust in youth self-direction and self-discovery.
In this sense, pedagogical models as self-directed learning, democratic education, are more and more pertinent, as they see education as rooted in play. Indeed, they emphasise experience, inquiry and participation in social life, not merely in the transmission of information.
Why play matters more than ever
The decline of play is now well documented as both a cultural, educational, wellbeing, psychological and ultimately a societal concern.
Children’s freedom to play away from adult supervision has declined sharply in recent years due to many factors, among which the augmented parental perception of risk, longer school days, increased homework, adult-organised activities, traffic, the loss of wild spaces and the normalisation of adult-managed childhood.
David Elkind warned that childhood has become increasingly hurried, with spontaneous play displaced by academic pressure, organised activities and adult expectations (Elkind, 2007). Historian Howard Chudacoff similarly describes a major shift in the history of childhood: the movement away from free, child-organised play towards more sedentary, commercialised and adult-regulated forms of activity (Chudacoff, 2007). From a paediatric perspective, Ginsburg argues that free play is essential to children’s cognitive, physical, social and emotional wellbeing, yet has been markedly reduced for many children (Ginsburg, 2007). Reading alongside Gray’s account of the erosion of children’s independent play and Hughes’ concerns about the loss of wild spaces and adult-free play, the pattern is clear: children have not stopped needing play; but the adults and the changingn environment have made it harder for them to access play (Gray, 2013; Hughes, 2015).
As we argued that play is one of the ways children build agency, confidence and emotional regulation, if we remove those experiences, we should not be surprised when anxiety rises and resilience becomes something schools have to “teach” in the abstract.
Digital life and covid-lock down has intensified this crisis, moving into the spaces left empty by the disappearance of outdoor freedom, neighbourhood play and child-led peer culture.
The COVID-19 pandemic made this deprivation of play more visible and more severe. Lockdowns interrupted not only formal learning informal social worlds through which children play, move, practise friendship and develop confidence. Reductions in outdoor play increased indoor and screen-based activity (Kourti et al., 2021) with negative effects on children’s mental health, wellbeing and health behaviours (Viner et al., 2022). The post-COVID task for schools, should have been to rebuild the conditions for play, belonging, movement and emotional recovery but unfortunately, this task seemed limited to “catching up” academically.
Jonathan Haidt in his famous book “ The Anxious Generation” has brought new public attention to the shift from a play-based childhood to what he calls a “phone-based childhood” (Haidt, 2024). His wider campaign argues for four norms: no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world .
Schools should listen carefully to the last part. A phone-free school is not enough if not coupled with a serious restoration of play, movement, friendship, risk, outdoor life…
Schools have a role to play in rebuilding a culture in which play is understood as part of children’s wellbeing, social development and educational formation. But this requires a decisive shift: play can no longer be treated as an early-years privilege or a pleasant supplement to learning. If the “disappearance of play” from early childhood education had already been considered alarming (Nicolopoulou, 2010) the constant lack of play in the later schooling should be considered equally serious. And this work demands a deeper reconsideration of how much schools trust children as learners. More space should be given in the recognition of children’s capacity to organise, investigate, negotiate and discover without every experience being designed in advance by adults. Play, in this sense, is based on educational trust.
Recommendations: how to put play back into schools and society
1. Restore free time in every school day
Every school should protect a substantial daily time for free play. This should not be confused with structured wellbeing, teacher-led team-building or “creative stations” with hidden learning objectives. Free play means time in which children can initiate, organise and sustain their own activity.
This also concerns adults. A school where every teacher’s minute is timetabled, measured and rushed will hardly create real breathing space for children. Teachers need time to observe, prepare environments, think about risk, and discuss what children are actually doing in play, not only supervise it.
A serious commitment to play should therefore start from the timetable. How much of the day is genuinely child-directed? And how much time do adults have to understand play pedagogically? Where the answer is uncomfortable, reform should begin there.
2. Design play-rich environments
The physical environment has a major effect on children’s play experience. Varied, stimulating environments with playful resources support more complex play indoors and outdoors.
A good playground should not look too finished. It should be flexible, changeable and challenging. If every object has one approved use, the adult imagination has defeated the child’s.
Schools need to make sure that all the typology of play is allowed by the environment. There needs to be space for loose parts, slopes, trees, ropes, crates, planks, tyres, sand, water, fabric, dens, hiding places and materials that can be moved, combined and transformed.
For teenagers, this will look different, but the principle is the same. Older pupils need social and creative spaces that are not only corridors, classrooms and sports pitches. They need places to sit, talk, rehearse, perform, make music, build, repair bikes, design, skate, debate, garden, cook, film, code, play strategy games, take physical risks and simply be with peers without every moment being over-managed.
A play-rich secondary school might include outdoor social courtyards, covered seating, performance corners, maker spaces, music rooms open at lunch, climbing or parkour-informed movement spaces, gardens, student-built installations, open sports equipment, drama spaces and areas where young people can gather without being treated as a behaviour problem waiting to happen.
A very good source of inspiration for schools can be adventure playgrounds, that treat children as makers of worlds, not consumers of equipment.
3. Give permission for trial, error and self-direction
Most school play fails not because children lack imagination, but because adult permission is too narrow. Adults should create boundaries that are clear enough to keep children safe, but wide enough to let them act, negotiate, fail, repair and begin again. A playground in which every raised voice is silenced, every stick is removed, every disagreement is treated as a crisis and every movement is controlled does not form resilience and disable the possibility to practice judgement.
Schools therefore need a more thoughtful culture of permission: permission to move, to invent, to get muddy, to disagree, to take reasonable risks, to belong to a peer culture and to discover, gradually, what they are able to do.
4. Train teachers in the pedagogy of play
To support free play well, adults must understand what play is, what conditions allow it to emerge, and how easily it can be interrupted or colonised by adult intentions. For this reason, play should have a more explicit place in teacher education and continuing professional development, not remain an optional concern for early-years specialists.
Initial teacher education should introduce future teachers to play theory, child development, outdoor pedagogy, risk-benefit assessment, observation of children’s play, inclusive play, loose-parts provision and the principles of playwork. It should also consider play beyond the early years, including the forms of social, physical, creative and digital play that matter in later childhood and adolescence. Without this preparation, teachers are often left to manage play behaviourally, rather than understand it pedagogically.
5. Protect play beyond the early years
Opportunities for play tend to diminish sharply after the early years, first through primary school and then even more clearly in secondary education. This decline is difficult to justify pedagogically. It assumes, wrongly, that play belongs only to small children, while older pupils require only instruction, discipline and assessment. On the contrary, the more children grow, the more play they need, but the style of play they need is different and more sophisticated. It is therefore fundamental to protect play in primary and secondary school. Primary school students need play as a space for movement, imagination, language, friendship and social negotiation. Secondary students need to be supported in putting forward forms of play that respect their age and development: informal social spaces, music, sport, performance, making, digital creativity, outdoor challenge, drama, debate, humour, games, independence and mixed-age collaboration.
6. Make space for play in the curriculum
Schools cannot protect play only in the margins. If play is always squeezed into the leftover minutes of the day, it will always be the first thing sacrificed.
Curriculum reform should make room for inquiry, making, outdoor learning, project work, collaborative problem-solving, drama, experimentation and self-directed study. This does not mean abandoning knowledge. It means recognising that knowledge becomes powerful when children can use it, test it, argue with it, represent it, dramatise it and connect it to the world.
Democratic and self-directed education offer important lessons here. Children learn responsibility by having real responsibility. They learn voice by using voice. They learn judgement by making decisions that matter. Schools should therefore create more opportunities for students to choose questions, shape projects, organise clubs, design spaces, lead assemblies, build things, mentor younger children and contribute to the life of the school.
7. Put forest school pedagogy and outdoor play into the normal school offer
Forest School should not be a luxury for schools with unusually committed staff. It should be part of a wider entitlement to nature-rich, risk-literate, hands-on learning.
Schools should create regular outdoor learning blocks, not one-off “nature days”. They should train staff in risk-benefit assessment, invest in outdoor clothing banks, use local parks and woodlands, and bring natural materials into school grounds where wild spaces are limited.
The point is not to romanticise the forest. The point is to restore children’s contact with complexity: weather, mud, tools, uneven ground, living things, uncertainty, cooperation and physical effort.
8. Rebuild neighbourhood play and adventurous public space
Schools cannot solve the play crisis alone. Families, communities, councils and city planners must rebuild permission for children to be outside together.
This is partly a question of culture, but it is also a question of infrastructure. Children need safe streets, slower traffic, accessible parks, adventurous playgrounds, public toilets, green spaces, cycle routes, community squares and neighbourhoods where adults recognise children’s presence as normal rather than problematic.
Parents also need support. Many families are busy, anxious and isolated. It is harder to let children play outside when streets feel unsafe, when no other children are out, when every parent feels individually responsible for managing risk. Collective routines can help: regular neighbourhood play hours, school-supported play streets, community playground sessions, after-school outdoor meet-ups and local agreements that make child-led play visible again.
9. Treat play as serious mental-health infrastructure
Play should be placed at the centre of any serious wellbeing strategy. Not as entertainment after the “real” work of school. Play should not be understood as the opposite of seriousness. In childhood, we have seen that it is often one of the forms through which serious experiences are processed, shared and made bearable.
In an anxious age, schools tend to respond with more monitoring, more wellbeing lessons, more interventions and more explicit language about resilience. Some of this may be useful. Yet children also need less formal, but not less important, conditions for wellbeing: laughter, movement, friendship, absurdity, physical freedom and the possibility to be with others without always being evaluated.
Conclusion: the reform we keep postponing
This article has argued that play should not be understood as marginal to education, nor as a privilege of the early years, but as a central condition of children’s development, learning and wellbeing.
Drawing on pedagogical traditions and contemporary research, it has suggested that play supports children’s agency, social negotiation, imagination, emotional regulation, embodied confidence and capacity for self-direction.
The article has also considered the contemporary decline of play, linking it to changes in schooling, family life, public space, digital culture and post-pandemic childhood. In this context, the International Day of Play should not be reduced to a symbolic celebration. It should become an opportunity for schools to reconsider the time, space, environments and adult practices that make real play possible.
The conclusion points therefore on the fact that schools should organise themselves differently in order to protect the multiple and subtitles forms that play can take over the different developmental stages of the children.. This means extending free time, designing richer environments, training teachers on pedagogy of play , restoring outdoor play, and trusting children more fully as active participants in their own development. In the core consideration that play is not an escape from education, on the contrary it is one of the forms through which education becomes alive.
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