What do children in

primary & secondary

schools think

about their playgrounds?

By Gwendolen Da Sousa Correa

Age 11

2011

Introduction

The reason I chose this question

I chose this question was because I am about to go to secondary school and what I had seen of the

school play ground at my secondary school looked really empty so trying to find out why I decided

was interesting and useful to me. I also wanted to find out whether the playground had anything to

do with the fact that bullying was (from rumours) a lot more common in secondary schools.

What other researchers have found out

Many researchers have researched the transition between primary and secondary but I could only

find one or two that had mentioned the playground. The first one (Galton, 2009) said some children

‘’take refuge’’ (p.5) in some club so this suggests that at the beginning of their first term children are

a little bit scared of the playground. Also in the late 1970s secondary schools provided year 7 with a

separate playground to keep them from the ‘’danger of mixing with the older peers ‘’ (p.6) and to

help make the change more gradual. Other research (Evangelou et al, 2008) claims that this is not

necessary because by the end of the first term 75 per cent have adjusted to their new surroundings.

Blatchford and Baines (2006) carried out a national survey of break times in primary and secondary

schools but they only involved years 5,8,10 so they didn’t say anything about transition from year 6

to 7 (primary to secondary school). The staff in primary generally look on play time as a time for

children to socialise and run around but secondary staff thought of it more as a time to refuel (eat

and drink) and give them a break. Staff and pupils agree that at break time the standard of

behaviour is poor but pupils also said that there was not much space or opportunity to take part in

fun activities. The difference of facilities in primary and secondary schools was obviously substantial.

It has also been acknowledged that secondary pupils are more inclined to say there’s not much to

do, fun activities are forbidden, there is not enough time to eat and drink and the grounds are in

great need of repair. Also over the past few years secondary school break time has got shorter so

cutting down the amount of time pupils have for physical exercise. I also looked at 6 other reports

about the transition between primary and secondary school but none of them talked about the play

ground as being important only the curriculum and one of them was even called ‘Playtime’s over’

(Spencer, 2005) although he didn’t mention the playground. I think he might mean children stop

needing playtime when they are at secondary school and need to become serious although if that

was true the world would be very boring.

Methodology I used many methods. I sent questionnaires to year 6 classes in 4 different primary schools and year

7 classes in a secondary school. I also held a focus group with a small group of year 7 girls and

carried out an observation in one primary and one secondary school playground. I also took photos

of the 2 playgrounds. I chose years 6 and 7 because I was interested in the transition. My research

project took about 8 months to complete

The questionnaires

The questionnaires provided a lot of data. I piloted my questionnaires on some year 5s who had no

problems completing it so I made no changes. The questionnaire is in the appendix.

The focus group

I held a focus group of year 7 girls (I had asked a girl to get some friends who would be happy to

help and she only asked girls) in one of their houses. There were six children in the group. I had

written some statements about break times on large cards and asked the girls, one at a time, to

choose a statement for the group to talk about. I recorded the discussion on a Dictaphone.

These are the statements I used:

I have loads to do at break time

I prefer primary school break times

I don’t do the same things at break time as I used to do at primary break time

I prefer secondary break times

I don’t play games like tag in break times

I used to play games like tag at break times at primary school

I have nothing to do at break time

I do the same thing at break time now as I used to do in primary

I play games like tag at break times

I coded the information I got from the focus group and grouped the answers in categories. I was

unable to pilot the focus group because it would have been too difficult to arrange

Observation

I observed a secondary and a primary schools break time. From looking at each of the playgrounds,

you could see that there was much more activity in the primary school playground as everyone was

doing something active and in the secondary only one group of people were playing football and all

the rest were doing was talking, eating and walking.

Photos

I took photos in my school and the secondary school playground to have proof and to look back on

the differences between the two playgrounds

Ethics

Ethics are a one of the many hard things about research because although lots of people are willing

to take part they don’t want others to know what they look like, their name, school or town. If you

don’t promise to keep those things secret (although you don’t often know all those things) you don’t

have very many willing people to help you so you HAVE to promise to keep all information

confidential. After I had finished with the questionnaires I destroyed them. For ALL photos I looked

at them and edited out ANY hints of where a person was, who they were and what school they went

to as you can see on the photo below.

Before I could get people to help me I had to get their consent so on the questionnaires I asked the

teacher to tell the children they didn’t have to complete it and for the focus group I told them what I

was doing and why. I also promised to keep all information confidential and anonymous and none of

them said they didn’t want to take part.

Findings

Questionnaires

These graphs and tables were made from data on my questionnaires. When I had all the completed

questionnaires, I tallied the data for each question. I then made graphs and tables after I had

entered the data onto Excel.

Do you like your playground?

S1= the secondary school p1=primary no. 1 p2= primary no.2 p3= primary no. 3

P4= primary no.4

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

p1 girl p1 boy

p2 girl p2 boys

p3 girls

p3 boys

p4 girls

p4 boys

s1 girls

s1 boys

like

dislike

its ok

What is in your school playground?

S1= the secondary school p1=primary no. 1 p2= primary no.2 p3= primary no. 3

P4= primary no.4

The colours don’t mean anything, it’s so you can tell them apart.

Equipment p1 p2 p3 p4 s1

wobbly log tyres in a frame

hanging tyres

sport pitch

benches & picnic benches

climbing wall

tyres on the ground

basketball nets

netball nets

wooden play equipment

spinning platform

tight rope

painting on the floor

monkey bars

climbing frame

sensory garden

field

adventure playground

sand pit

tennis court

timber trail

What do you like\dislike about your playground?

P1 boys

No girls replied from this school

P2 girls

Like Number Dislike Number

Trees for hiding 1 Too small 6

Sport pitches\nets 3 Trees 2

The field 2 Not much to do 3

The amount of space 4 Footballers taking all the room

1

Climbing wall 1 Some places are out of bonds

1

Millennium garden 1 Really slippery in the rain

1

Separate areas in the playground

1 Not allowed in and around trees

2

Equipment 3

Benches 1

P2 boys

Like Number Dislike Number

Hiding places 2 Too small 3

Tree area 1 No equipment on Friday

1

Football pitch 4 Not allowed on wood pile

1

Equipment 1 Places being out of bounds

3

Lots of things to do 1 Stuff to trip up on 1

Climbing wall 1

The amount of space 2

Pond 2

Like Number Dislike Number

All weather pitch 6 No monkey bars 1

Tyres 1 No climbing frame 1

Everything 1 Gravel 1

Nothing 1

Everything 1

P3 girls

Like Number Dislike Number

Fun 1 Small 2

Lots to do 1 Nothing to do 3

Painting on the floor 1 No climbing equipment 1

Big 1 No swing 1

Sport pitch 1 No slide 1

Field 1

Tyres on the ground 1

Bug bungalow 2

Astro turf 1

P3 boys

P4 girls

Like Number Dislike Number

Sport pitch 2 Too small 6

Big 2 Bug bungalow 1

Field 2 Not much space to run on Astro turf

1

Tyres 2 Astro turf 1

Astro turf 2 Not allowed to run 1

Painting on floor 1

Timber trail 1

Like Number Dislike Number

Netball nets 1 People getting hurt 1

Field 5 It’s boring 3

Lots of climbing stuff 1 Uneven 1

Adventure playground 3 Old playground 1

It’s big and you’re free to do what you want

5 Not allowed to eat outside

2

Football pitch 1 No fun equipment 1

No swings 2

Gravel 2

Not allowed in the wild area

1

New adventure playground

1

P4 boys

Like Number Dislike Number

Field 6 No nets in football goals

1

Sport pitch 3 Not allowed in wild area

1

Big 5 Everything 2

Lots of equipment 1 Football pitch 1

Adventure playground 3 Short break times 1

Climbing frame 1 No swings 1

Monkey bars 1 No slide 1

Sand pit 2 No roundabout 1

Safe 1 No equipment 2

Sensory garden 1 Dirty 1

Not allowed every where

1

S1 girls

S1 boys

Like Number Dislike Number

Sport pitch 2 Not allowed to run 1

Big 7 Crowded 1

Freedom 2 Chewing gum on the ground

1

Computers 1 Nothing to do 7

Alleyways 1 Most of it’s concrete 1

Muddy 1

Science block rules 1

Like Number Dislike Number

Big 7 Nothing to do 6

Everything 2 Not much greenery 1

Trees 3 Muddy field 3

Tennis court 1 Not enough space to sit

2

Grass 2

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

ball games running games

hiding games

stuff inside vocal stuff other

p1

p2

p3

p4

s1

What you do in playtime?

S1= the secondary school p1=primary no. 1 p2= primary no.2 p3= primary no. 3

p4= primary no.4 (vocal stuff = singing, talking, screaming etc)

Year 6 children in the 4 primary schools listed 56 different activities so I coded them by making a list

of all the activities and highlighting the ones which were ball games, running games, etc. by using

different colours. The secondary school children listed 12 activities. ‘Other’ was things like walking

and going mad.

Focus group

After I had held the focus group I typed up everything they said from my Dictaphone recording and

then printed it all out then I cut each thing they said so they were all on separate bits of paper. Then

I coded my data by looking at each strip and thinking of a heading. I then looked at the rest and if it

didn’t fit under any category I already had I made a new one.

Categories Example

What they used to do We always used to play football at primary school. We’d do gymnastics outside in front of everyone.

What they do now Sometimes we play Chinese whispers. All we do is sit eat and talk.

Nothing to do It’s not like we have nothing to do we just don’t do it. I sometimes feel I have nothing to do.

What you are allowed to do in secondary but not primary

We’re allowed inside at secondary which makes a lot of differences. You have a lot more freedom.

Not enough time at secondary You only have 20 minutes at break time and 3 minutes is getting to class anyway and lunch is 40 minutes and the last 5 is getting to class.

How people treat you in the playground

You can go the library but then people think you’re a geek. At primary school we used to play ‘it’ and stuff but now you can’t do that without people staring at you.

Preferring primary/secondary Actually it depends. Now I prefer this one (secondary) but when I was younger I preferred the other (primary). No, the thing is I like secondary school and primary school for different reasons but I like primary school because you used to have a lot more to do but in secondary school I like that you are allowed to stay inside when it’s raining.

What one gender does and the other doesn’t

The boys play football. No girls play football at (secondary school).

Wet play In our (primary) school we were only allowed wet play if it was tipping it down. There was an old teacher who would go. “Oh my god you must go inside,” when it was drizzling.

Photos

A few of the photos are in this report. From them you can tell that there is a lot more equipment in

the primary school playground and the secondary school only has a sport pitch, muddy field and

concrete.

Discussion In a way I have answered my question, ‘What do children in primary & secondary schools think

about their playgrounds?’ but more precisely I have answered another one. My question probably

should have been, ‘Is there a difference between primary and secondary school playgrounds and, if

so, what do children think about it?’ because instead of finding out just what they thought about it I

found out all about the differences and what they thought about them. Although I was interested in

the fact that bullying was apparently more common in secondary school this didn’t come up in any

of my research.

From looking at my results you can see that in primary school, all the children are much more active

and even the ones who spend their break times chatting move around a lot more even if they’re just

on a wobbly log or walking around. From my focus group, the interesting points were that they

would like to play games like tag but are too self-conscious. So it’s not that children don’t want to

play it’s that they’re worried about what others would think about them. One of the girls said “It’s

not like we have nothing to do we just don’t do it.” It’s probably because at one point someone said

they were too old to play and stopped others from playing and when others started playing they all

got stared at. Another student said that if you fall over, you got really, really embarrassed. This

implies that in primary school if a Year 6 falls over it’s just ignored but at secondary school if a Year 7

falls over, people will tease them.

Does my research agree with others? I didn’t find anybody saying they took refuge or that they were

scared in the playground but it might be that my research didn’t encourage them to admit that.

None of the statements I used in my focus group mentioned that sort of thing. Blatchford and Baines

(2006) didn’t look at Years 6 and 7. Although there was a good reason for this to do with the fact

that Year 6s and 7s have exams, they probably should have looked at those years but after they had

done their exams and were all relaxed because when you come up from nursery, teachers never

expect you to come up from just playing all the time to doing lessons most of the time so they make

lesson much more like playtime and the playground is not so different. But when children go from

Year 6 to 7 they go from having a playground with lots of equipment and lots of active stuff to do to

a big field with only space to play football and walk. My research agreed with many of the things

that Blatchford and Baines (2006) said, including that there’s not much to do, fun activities are

forbidden and there’s not enough time in breaks.

More research should be conducted on transition and playgrounds and it should involve many more

schools than I was able to do.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think my research has been extremely successful, fun and interesting to me. I’ve

presented my research to the partnership of headteachers in my local area and to a governors’

meeting at my school. All of them said that the research was interesting and asked many questions

including the headteacher of the secondary school saying that girls never play tag but some boys

play tag up to Year 8. Providing more equipment in secondary school would encourage children to

be more active. The Government, doctors and many other people say this is important but there

would need to be some way to persuade all the secondary pupils to use it. There are heaps of other

questions which I could research to find out more about this, e.g. What would encourage secondary

school pupils to be more active in the playground?

If I could do my research again, I would probably try and do a more national research so that I can

find out if this is not just something significant to where I live and the same problems occur all over

the UK.

Bibliography

All the references I used in my research if you want to find out more. It was written by my adult

research assistant.

BLATCHFORD, P. and BAINES, E. (2006) ‘A follow up national survey of break times in primary and

secondary schools’ *online+. Available from:

http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/Breaktimes_Final%20report_Blatchford.pdf

[Accessed 18 January 2011].

EVANGELOU, M., TAGGART, B., SYLVA, K., MELHUISH, E., SAMMONS, P., SIRAJ-BLATCHFORD, I.

(2008) ‘What Makes a Successful Transition from Primary to Secondary School?’, Effective Pre-

school, Primary and Secondary Education 3–14 Project (EPPSE 3–14) Research Report, DCSF-RR019.

Annersley, Notts: Department for Children, Schools and Families.

GALTON, M. (2009) ‘Moving to secondary school: initial encounters and their effects’, in Perspectives

on Education 2 (Primary–Secondary Transfer in Science): 5-21. [online]. Available from

www.wellcome.ac.uk/perspectives [Accessed 18 January 2011].

SPENCER, A. (2005) ‘Playtime’s over…’, Leader, Issue 5 [online]. Available from:

http://archive.leadermagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=161 [Accessed 18 January 2011].

AppendixDO NOT PUT YOUR NAME ON THIS QUESTIONNAIRE

Hi my name’s Gwen and I am 11 years old & go to (name of my school). I am doing some

research on primary and secondary school play grounds. Please fill in this questionnaire. Do

not put your name on it. All information will be confidential

1. Are you a boy or a girl?

Boy Girl

2. What is in your school playground?

Please note

Swings

Slide

Monkey bars

Climbing frame

Wobbly log

Tyres in a frame

Hanging tyres

Sport pitch

Other (please note)

3. Over all do you like your school

playground

Yes No

4. What do\don’t you like about your

school playground?

Please note

Like Dislike

5. Which year are you in (please tick)

6 7

6. What do you do in break times (please

note)?

Thank you