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One local school is taking steps to relax its playground rules, bringing back physical contact games, such as bullrush, and allowing tree climbing.
Dairy Flat School began the process last month as part of a plan to rebuild its playground structures, canvassing parents’ views on the rules.
Around a quarter of the school’s 180 families responded to the survey. The results showed a big majority in favour of tackle/bullrush type games (84 percent) and 80 percent in favour of tree climbing, while 88 percent said the associated risk of injury to students was acceptable.
However, this was contradicted by comments from parents who stressed the need for supervision and questioned whether their child might feel vulnerable.
One said that any kind of direct physical contact would be “a huge mistake”.
Principal Debbie Marshall says it is a case of approving of more risky playground activities in theory, but also feeling naturally protective about your children.
She says there is also a need to emphasise the difference between physical play and bullying. “If a child is knocked down or hurt in a game, or by accident, they learn from that,” she says.
Research conducted in recent years at AUT, as well as the experience of other schools which re-introduced free play, indicate that when mudslides, skateboarding, bullrush, tree climbing and free play with materials such as wood and tyres come back in, bullying declines.
Dr Scott Duncan, head of research at AUT’s school of sport and recreation, says this is because negative behaviour increases when children are bored.
Dr Duncan is conducting on-going research in this area and is also on the board of Takapuna Primary, which is making the transition into allowing free play.
He says it’s only in the last 15–20 years that New Zealand and the rest of the Western world became extremely risk averse.
“I have children and I’m aware of that instinct to protect them, but if you don’t let them make mistakes they can go through life with less resilience and less able to handle risk,” he says.
Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks and dealing with consequences. Dr Duncan says that part of the brain develops naturally as we age, but exposure to things such as being high in a tree and having to get down safely, or testing yourself with rough and tumble games improves that development and provides better judgment of risk.
Mrs Marshall agrees and says that she feels sorry for children who are essentially wrapped in cotton wool. She says discussions with the children themselves show that boys in particular would like more physical, free play.
She says to find the right balance, staff will initially take a more relaxed approach to the rules, monitor it, and see what evolves. Next term the school will look at starting supervised tackle games.
Dr Duncan says supervision should be an interim step only, while parents get used to the idea. “The lack of supervision is the whole point,” he says. “Kids need to be able to make up the games and set their own rules – they generally have a pretty good understanding of right and wrong.”
Meanwhile, other local schools are feeling the need to tighten their playground rules in light of the current focus on health and safety.
Wainui School principal Gillian Bray says the school recently tightened up its tree climbing rules to increase safety.
“We still climb trees though and always have and we allow modified tackling/bullrush games,” she says. “If problems occur, the game is stopped by staff or it will be supervised. The children are encouraged to take responsibility and have fun and not lose the right to play these games.”
However, she says that reluctantly the school is in the middle of tightening up all its health and safety rules because of the “increased legal requirements and ramifications being put upon us all”.
Remember bullrush?
Bullrush involves one or two ‘chasers’ standing in the middle of a field in front of a large group of children. The chasers try to tag or tackle the children as they run to the other side. Tagged children became chasers. The game lasts until one person was left untagged – the winner.
From the mid-1980s some schools banned bullrush because of concerns about liability when children were hurt.
It is making a comeback as research indicates the importance of free play, physicality and risk taking in children.
