Creating Value In Schools
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Many school leaders report finding playtimes more difficult to manage. So how can you make best use of your staff to support positive, inclusive and effective breaks? We spoke with Thérèse Hoyle, Founder and Director of Positive Playtimes, for the podcast episode Why playtime matters – and how to make it work.
When I'm running training programmes in school, I look at staff resourcing. How are staff being deployed? Where are they? Are they being utilised most effectively?
We are struggling financially in schools, so this is really, really important: we need to be getting the most out of our staff.
In a school recently, I observed two members of staff checking children into the dining hall. The dining hall's warm. It's cold outside. As a member of staff, I might want to be in the dining hall more than I might want to be outside!
But as a school, in terms of deployment of staff and use of staff and effectiveness, that is not a good use of resources. I could have two children, Year 6 maybe, checking children in the dining room. Maybe I don’t need two, or maybe I don’t need any. I’d have to work that one out – but that was a waste of staffing.
In another school, there were two members of staff in the first aid room. And yes, the first aid room is very cosy. I was talking to them about it and they said, ‘but we like it in the first aid room’. But actually, it’s not what you like, it’s what’s good for the school.
And we don't need first aid rooms, generally speaking. We need to have our staff prepared with first aid kits to be in the playground.
Most of the schools that work with us through our Postive Playtime Essentials or Award Programme find that accidents are reduced by about 80%. So we have less need for first aid, which is amazing, because the children have far more to do.
So where should the staff be? Headteachers and senior leaders often say that the staff are standing around chatting, so they’re not actually engaging with the children.
But what’s really common, and I find quite sad, is that when I ask lunchtime supervisors, ‘when was the last time you had training?’, what I find is that the majority have never had training. So actually, we're putting these members of staff out into the playground without ever having training.
So no wonder they feel a bit de-skilled. A lot of them don't know how to manage behaviour. They've had no training. And that's why we find at the moment a lot of senior leaders are actually working at lunchtime. They're managing the behaviour at lunchtime, and that's not ok. Senior leaders need to be doing leadership roles.
Deployment is also thinking about how we zone the playground, so that we have different activity areas. What we tend to do is have staff on different areas of the playground. For example, we always want a game being played in the playground. It could be a circle game, or a traditional playground game like What's the Time Mister Wolf or Duck Duck Goose (download Free Playground Games from - Therese Hoyle).
But we want our staff to be playing games, because games mean that children get included. So if we've got children wandering around and a bit lonely, at least they know they can go to a game and be included. That sense of inclusiveness is so important.
Listen to the full episode (36 minutes)
Areas for action and reflection
Reading and resources
