Hard surfaces, empty spaces and litigation: the problem with Irish schoolyards

For many children, it’s their favourite part of the day. But for others, it’s the time they dread most, fearful of being excluded, bullied or discriminated in one way or another.

Despite the significance of break time in the lives of young people, it is an area that hasn’t received much attention from policymakers or researchers. After all, more than half a million children share school yards in more than 3,000 primary schools for supervised outdoor break times of at least 30 minutes a day.

However, a new study by occupational therapist Michelle Bergin looks closely at the problems with playgrounds, both their design and the difficulties teachers’ face in dealing with more subtle social issues due to their preoccupation with health and safety issues.

“The priority of teachers is to keep children safe and the reality of the yard is that teachers are responding to children’s cuts and bruises or a ball going over a wall. It’s difficult to have time to deal with social issues like exclusion, bullying and racism,” says Bergin.

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Her study, Irish Schoolyards: Teachers’ Experience of Their Practices and Children’s Play, is published in the Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools and Early Intervention.

Bergin’s research highlights the fact that because break time is not linked specifically to the curriculum, it rarely gets discussed in staffrooms apart from when responding to crises.

“Break time is a forgotten time. It needs to be integrated into inclusive and intercultural educational policies,” she says.

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Researchers have also found that despite providing a break from the rules and requirements of the classrooms, time in the schoolyard is often the most stressful part of the day for teachers. And previous studies found that one in five children describe being bullied in schoolyards in Ireland.

Sinéad Ní Bhrádaigh is a teacher in Galway Educate Together National School with a special interest in how to get the most out of playgrounds.

“The problem is that playground play hasn’t evolved compared to classroom pedagogy and methodology. The doors are opened and children just run outside to what are generally flat tarmac rectangular spaces with nothing in terms of stimulation or focus,” says Ní Bhrádaigh.

She argues that there is an expectation on children to exist in these spaces successfully regardless of their ability, personal capacity or social skills.

“It’s survival of the fittest. It can be a very intense time. It just doesn’t match how structured, mentored or supported children are in the classrooms,” she explains.

In Bergin’s study, Irish schoolyards were described as hard-surfaced, with few often broken objects and limited access to natural areas.

And the teachers Bergin interviewed felt they had limited resources to change the design of the schoolyard to improve things. One teacher said that exclusion and racism were largely unseen and an undercurrent within the schoolyard. And children who don’t speak the majority language and autistic children are often those the teachers are most concerned about during break times.

Ní Bhrádaigh says that in Ireland the overarching issues are insurance and litigation. “Teachers are afraid not to be able to see all the children in the yard and if something happens around a corner, there could be a litigious aftermath,” she says. This fear results in limiting children’s movement to the yard with other areas of the school grounds – including green spaces – left unused during break times.

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Ní Bhrádaigh visited Dutch schools as part of an Erasmus programme and noted that the children there were allowed to circulate around the whole of the school campus.

“Teachers did loops of the space and didn’t have the fears of the children not being adequately supervised. I don’t know any school in Ireland that has a free-roaming policy on their campus,” she says.

In 2019, the school community at Galway Educate Together National School decided they wanted to make better use of their outdoor environment and established a children’s advisory panel to help guide the project.

“The children said they wanted to run, hide, climb and slide so we developed a variety of outdoor spaces,” says Ní Bhrádaigh.

Prior to this, the yard wasn’t a nice place to be ... When children are bored, they cause trouble and mischief, running aimlessly, knocking into people, but now it’s such a pleasant space for them to be in. There is choice for every child so they can move to what they like best

—  Sinéad Ní Bhrádaigh

These spaces include a climbing wall, a loose-parts play area with car tyres, crates, palates and wooden blocks, a chill-out zone with benches and blackboards and a space for large outdoor board games.

A tunnel was added to the slide and climbing frame that already existed and the space with ball games was caged off so as not to intrude on other areas. Each class has access to different areas on a rota basis.

“It’s been transformational,” says Ní Bhrádaigh. “Prior to this, the yard wasn’t a nice place to be in for teachers due to the amount of conflict. When children are bored, they cause trouble and mischief, running aimlessly, knocking into people but now it’s such a pleasant space for them to be in and there is choice for every child so they can move to what they like best.”

Ní Bhrádaigh says the school had a risk assessment carried out on the new additions to the playground for insurance purposes.

“We looked especially at the loose-parts play areas but there are more injuries during ball play than moving a tyre from one place to another,” she says.

And while she argues that each school needs to look at how they can adapt their own schoolyard, she says the Department of Education could take a lead on this. “The department needs to develop new school playground guidelines, an analysis of spaces and funds for schools to create different outdoor areas to address the different needs of children,” she says.

Claire O’Neill, deputy principal of St Michael’s primary school in Blackrock village in Cork, believes it is up to schools to be “creative and innovative” with what they have.

Like many schools, St Michael’s has two yards – one for the younger children and one for the older children. In the junior yard, an old bicycle shelter has been repurposed as a covered area with a small low bench and sand pits. In the senior yard, there are old tyres, a mud kitchen with a sink where children can play, and mature trees.

“We don’t allow the children to climb to the top of the trees but they can hang off sturdy lower branches. The small risk of falling and hurting themselves is outweighed by the benefit of swinging from a tree. Playgrounds have to be far more than places to keep children safe in,” says O’Neill.

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O’Neill argues that there are plenty of school policies that could apply to how playgrounds are used.

“We explicitly use the Department of Education framework for wellbeing in our school. And when you interrogate core values such as inclusivity, you have to consider what [playground] games are culturally sensitive and diverse with rules that are transparent to children with language barriers,” she explains.

O’Neill also believes the playground provides “many teachable moments” for teachers on yard duty.

“The restorative practice model allows children to resolve conflict when harm is caused intentionally or not,” she explains. By asking the simple questions – what happened? What were you thinking at the time? What have you been thinking since then? And what do you think needs to happen next? – O’Neill suggests children can resolve many conflicts themselves.

She also argues that the Stay Safe programme, which encourages children to tell five people – not necessarily all adults – if they have a problem, can be applied to playgrounds too.

O’Neill says she supervises the playground every day in St Michael’s School. “It’s one of my favourite parts of the day. My biggest challenge is a very wet day when children can’t go outside.

“But, when they are outside, my biggest challenge is figuring out whether the way children are playing is engaging them. If a child is playing on their own, I have to ask myself if they need a bit of alone time. It’s all about understanding how complex the playground really is.”