Five minutes or five hours? Exploring variations in time for play in Reception classes
Reception is unique in England’s education system: it is both the final year of the Early Years Foundation Stage and the first year of school. Recently, there has been considerable debate about what teaching in Reception should look like. Should it be predominantly play-based, developing ways of learning established in pre-school settings, or should it be more school-like, resembling teaching across the rest of primary education?
These questions outline a burgeoning point of tension around ‘school readiness’, with concerns that preparing children for the next stage of education may not be compatible with the play-based approaches traditionally considered appropriate for children of this age. While ‘playing and exploring’ is named as one of the three key characteristics of effective learning and teaching in the Early Years Framework, there are concerns that the value of play is being underestimated amid the growing emphasis on preparing children for the next stage of their education.
So, what is actually happening in Reception classrooms? In our recent report, Mathematics teaching in the Reception year, we examine children’s access to different types of play, including child-initiated and outdoor play. We find a mixed picture, as we explain below.
How much play do children experience?
Evidence suggests that guided play is particularly beneficial for developing early maths skills, . Child-initiated play also provides crucial opportunities for being mathematical within the environment and everyday contexts, especially if practitioners actively engage and highlight .
In our study, teachers reported that children had access to an average of around 90 minutes of child-initiated play each day. Behind that average, however, was striking variation with teachers reporting anything from as little as five minutes to nearly five hours. Such variation illustrates a diverse use of play across classrooms, reflecting the existing debates and opinions around the purpose of play in Reception. For example, some teachers appear to be dedicating short, allocated time slots for play. In contrast, other teachers appear to be adopting primarily play-based pedagogies, dedicating large proportions of the day to play punctuated by short group or whole class teaching sessions.
We found similar variation in children’s access to outdoor play. Teachers reported that children had access to outdoor play for an average of two hours per day, ranging from just 10 minutes to as much as over five hours. These figures suggest that some children have much less access to outdoor play than others. This is concerning because we know that outdoor play is particularly beneficial for early maths learning, enabling children to explore mathematical ideas such as space, size and weight in natural environments.
Who has less access to play?
The variation becomes particularly alarming when we look at which children have less access to play. We found that children in schools with higher numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals tended to have less access to both child-initiated and outdoor play. This added up to around 15–20 minutes less per day of each, on average.
Given that inequalities in mathematical outcomes can emerge early and persist as children move through school, understanding differences in children’s experiences from the beginning of schooling is an important part of understanding how inequalities can develop.
Following inequalities from the start
At the Observatory for Mathematical Education, we are interested not only in where differences in mathematical outcomes exist, but in when they emerge, what may be driving them and how they change as children progress through education.
Reception is therefore an important starting point. By examining children’s early experiences of mathematics and following learners as they move through the education system, our work can build a clearer picture of how different experiences and opportunities relate to later outcomes.
Understanding those pathways is central to our wider work. By following learners over time, we can examine how early differences in experiences and opportunities relate to later attainment, attitudes and participation in mathematics – providing insight about where inequalities emerge and where there may be opportunities to make the greatest difference.
Read more in our report
Author information
is a Senior Research Fellow at the Observatory for Mathematical Education.