Free ice-cream and fairground rides help pupils reconnect

FREE ice-cream and fairground rides in the schoolyard sounds like the stuff of dreams for most children. That’s exactly what pupils at one school returned to for the first day of term.

After a year of lockdown, school closures and remote learning, there has been debate about whether children need to catch up on school work or learn to be together again.

Staff at Penybont Primary in Bridgend decided to run two days of fun activities for their 349 pupils when school opened full-time for the summer term after 12 months of lockdown restrictions and disruption.

Head teacher Robbie Owen said children have “lost out on childhood” in the pandemic and need to learn to have fun together again.

When term started for the children this week, they were due to be feeding lambs, enjoying fairground rides, campfire singing, making kites and tackling assault courses.

An ice-cream van was to be parked in the playground to give every child a free ice-cream and they would also be able to make biscuits and fruit salad together.

Mr Owen, who has been head teacher since January 2020 and was deputy and acting head before that, said the school was lucky to have two large fields.

“Children have missed so much of their childhood experiences in the last year during the pandemic,” he said.

“Lots of our families are really lucky and the children do lots of things, but we also have a high proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds and we want them to have the same opportunities.

“All children have had a massive proportion of childhood taken away from them this year.”

The theme of childhood will run throughout the term, with teachers asking children what they want to learn in line with the new curriculum.

That does not mean they won’t do schoolwork, but it will be more tailored to the themes they want. By welcoming them back with two days of fun, which was also to include paint-splatting, bubble-making, a teddy bears’ picnic and puppet shows, teachers hope to help children feel less worried about returning to school. In the disruption and lockdown of the last year some pupils have had to self-isolate, all have missed friends, clubs, sport and normal social interaction, and wellbeing issues have been a concern, Mr Owen said.

He said: “We need to help pupils as much as possible. There has been an increase in children needing play therapy, we have a play therapist coming in twice a week.”

He said the new curriculum was an opportunity for teachers to be more flexible but that academic work would not suffer.

“We already have in place effective structures for our pupils to develop, support and challenge their academic needs throughout our school, but we see our role as much more than that. We continually seek to provide wonderful learning and life experiences, placing pupil wellbeing at the heart of our school.

“Our staff decided that our summer term theme should be entitled ‘Childhood’, to allow our pupils as much opportunity as possible to reconnect with their friends and engage in activities and experiences that they otherwise may go without.

“The quality of online teaching has been fantastic but I am concerned about the experiences children have lost.

“We can address any gaps in academic structure.

“Primary school should be about caring and our standards are really good. Reading, writing and maths is non-negotiable.

“We want our children to settle back in, re-acclimatise and reconnect. Their wellbeing as well as academic work is important.”