Playtime is over: school breaks vanishing

SCHOOL playtime is becoming a thing of the past for a generation of children, a report has found.

Just 1 per cent of secondary schools have afternoon breaks compared with 41 per cent in 1995 according to a study by University College London’s Institute of Education.

Researchers examined changes in school breaks and children’s social lives at more than 1,000 schools in 2017, 2006 and 1995.

There had been a “marked reduction” in the total amount of break time, with 11- to 16-year-olds having 65 minutes less break time each week than they did a quarter of a century ago.

Concern about childhood obesity is rising, with more than 22,000 out of 556,000 children in year six classed as severely obese. Anti-obesity campaigners described the report’s findings as “woeful”, saying ministers must intervene and set guidelines.

The length of the school day has remained more or less the same over the 25 years but break times are being “squeezed”, according to Dr Ed Baines, one of the report’s authors, with poten- tially “serious implications” for wellbeing and development.

Pressure on lunch breaks was of “particular concern”, he added. Children “barely have enough time to queue up and to eat their lunch”.

In 1995, a third of secondary schools had lunch breaks of less than 55 minutes, but this had risen to 82 per cent in 2017. A quarter reported lunch breaks of 35 minutes or less.

Primary school pupils aged five to seven had 85 minutes of break time

a day, down from 94 minutes in 1995. The study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, also found that there had been a “marked increase” in the average numbers of adults supervising at break times since 1995.

Tam Fry, chair of the national obesity forum, said he was “horrified” by the findings. “We believe that primary and secondary schools should be making sure that school children have one hour every day,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“It is totally meaningless to say we will do nothing, and children can do it in their own time. It is just woeful that we have taken this very uninspiring attitude towards physical activity.

“It is up to the Government to set the rules and the guidelines which all schools should be following. If you leave it to the schools they are so stretched and overworked [that the break issue] will fall by the way side.”

The Department for Education said: “The Government has given all schools the autonomy to make decisions about the structure and duration of their school day.

“However, we are clear that pupils should be given an appropriate break and we expect school leaders to make sure this happens.”