Key Stage 1 Curriculum

Debate between Helena Dollimore and Roz Savage

Monday 26th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Savage]

Woods for Learning sounds marvellous. We know that time spent in nature punches above its weight in terms of psychological and physical benefits for children, so I absolutely agree.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for highlighting the importance of access to play. Something that many children and parents have raised with me in Hastings and Rye is how many playgrounds have closed or fallen into disrepair in my constituency. I have done an audit of all the playgrounds and found that eight have closed since 2015 and more than half need upgrading. Many of them are run by housing associations that neglect their duty to maintain them. Does she agree that we have to do better and ensure that the playgrounds, often in the most needy parts of our constituencies, are properly maintained so that children can enjoy them?

[Dr Savage]

I absolutely agree. I have encountered similar challenges in my constituency of South Cotswolds when playgrounds are not well maintained, or when developers, having promised to provide them, shove them off into a muddy corner of a field that is entirely inappropriate for children’s play. It is essential for the sake of our children that we make sure that safe, enjoyable and not-too-muddy spaces are provided.

I thank the creator of the petition, Ruth Lue-Quee, who is in the Public Gallery with many others who feel passionately about this issue; Ruth is a former deputy headteacher and now an education consultant. I also thank the more than 106,000 people who signed the petition, including more than 200 people from my South Cotswolds constituency. That scale of support reflects a widespread sense that our education system, as it is currently structured, fails too many children. At the all-party parliamentary group on play last week, I heard even more from education experts on that very point. One experienced schoolteacher told me bluntly that the present model works well for perhaps 10% of pupils, but not for the majority. That is not because teachers lack skill or commitment—they have those in abundance—but because the system is fundamentally misaligned with how a child’s brain works and learns.

On a personal note, I should say that this debate goes to the heart of why I decided to stand for Parliament. The preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution commits us, as a party, to building a society in which no one is

“enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity”

and in which every person is empowered to develop their potential to the full. The journey towards fulfilled potential begins in childhood. Play is one of the primary ways in which human potential, creativity and confidence are formed; that is why I was keen to put my hand up to introduce this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee.

Let me return to that first key distinction: the difference between enrichment and play-based learning. Enrichment, as I have said, means activities added on around the edges of the school day. Play-based learning, on the other hand, is about how learning itself is designed and delivered. It is a planned, teacher-guided pedagogy in which reading, writing, arithmetic and wider knowledge are learned through exploration, talk, movement, construction, role play and problem solving.

Teachers are not stepping back—far from it. They are actively shaping the environment, setting challenges, modelling language, asking probing questions and intentionally extending children’s thinking while giving them genuine agency over how they engage in an embodied and creative way. Practitioners give powerful evidence of what that looks like in practice. In one platinum-rated primary school that uses a play-first model, the headteacher told me that children must complete all must-do tasks, which are aligned with national expectations, but the children get to choose when and how to do them during extended play-based learning sessions.

The school has academic standards at or above national averages. Attendance is described as “through the roof”: the children cannot wait to get there in the morning and they are a bit reluctant to leave at the end of the day. Behaviour problems fall and children almost cannot wait to participate. Globally, across more than 2,000 schools and 1.8 million children using high-quality play approaches, we see the same pattern emerging: higher engagement, better attendance, fewer behaviour issues—because children are not wired to sit still for hours a day at age five—and much greater professional satisfaction for teachers, who see their students really thriving.

That brings to me to the second distinction: guided play in classrooms and free play in playgrounds. Guided play in the classroom supports cognitive and language development. Children experience what psychologists call “productive struggle”. They plan, manage resources, seek help when they need it, collaborate, persist and reflect. They develop independence, motivation and embodied understanding, not simply compliance and conformity. Free play, especially outdoors and in nature, serves a different but equally vital purpose. It is where children develop physical confidence and learn to negotiate rules, to resolve conflict, to take manageable risks and to build friendships while experiencing a real sense of autonomy. Free play supports mental health, resilience and social intelligence in ways that no formal lesson, no matter how well designed, can fully replicate.