Nursery World - In My View: Letting children play their way

After decades in the backwaters, children's play is moving closer to the mainstream of public policy debate. The centre-left thinktank Compass has launched a 'Charter for Childhood' that rightly joins the dots between the ever-growing commercialisation of children's lives and their loss of play opportunities.

There is growing political agreement about the reality of what playworkers call 'play deprivation'. Children are suffering because they are losing out on some crucial self-directed childhood experiences.

In a speech to the Daycare Trust, shadow education secretary David Willetts argued that a loss of play opportunities has damaged children's grasp of basic science, which depends upon playful experimentation and hands-on engagement with everyday objects. Others are concerned about deficits in children's experience of nature, physical risk, tools, or social interactions.

Most would agree that schools, nurseries and other childcare settings have some role in providing these experiences, through offering what the experts like to call 'well-planned play'. But this raises further questions. What is the difference between 'spontaneous play' - the kind that we all enjoyed as children - and 'well-planned play'? And does this difference matter?

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