“Many adults don’t play very much at all, and they forget their experiences of play as a child.”

This, said Paul Ramchandani (pictured), the LEGO professor of play in education, development and learning (PEDAL) at the University of Cambridge, is why play has so long been neglected as a vital part of education.

In recent years, the dial has very slowly been shifting within policy circles, with the launch of the Raising the Nation Play Commission in 2024. But in general, adults don’t tend to give play much value, despite children reporting that it is central to their lives and experiences, added Ramchandani.

And while early years practitioners have long understood the power of play, they can sometimes come up against parents who ask why their child is still playing rather than engaging with the formal teaching that they see more clearly as connecting to good outcomes.

So, how can early years foundation stage settings and schools help parents understand just how important play is?

That was the central question of a recent online session led by Ramchandani and held by Cambridge International as part of its Early Years Conference.

Play linked to positive outcomes

“There are lots of different ways to categorise and think about play,” said Ramchandani, describing how it can entail indoor and outdoor activities, whether alone or with peers, with objects or the imagination, or indeed in the digital world.

But whatever kind of play a child is doing, “there is consistent evidence across a range of outcomes and from a range of research studies that play is linked with positive outcomes for children”, he added.

“Physical play is linked to better health. Early parent-child play is associated very strongly with better parent-child relationships and better socioemotional development for children, both in terms of behaviour and in terms of anxiety and stress,” he said.

“Peer play is associated with better social relationships and children having better emotional self-regulation. And pretend play is associated with improved cognitive development and higher levels of creativity.”

Clearly, these are things anyone looking after children - be they parents or school staff - would like to see.

But, Ramchandani added, it’s key to remember that because “many parents might not have experienced [play] in their own education”, they might find it difficult to understand why it should play such a role in their child’s.

The language of play

Because of this, the first step is to “make sure that the word ‘play’ doesn’t become a barrier”, he said. Using words such as “practice” and “learning” - because that is so often what play within an educational setting is - allows teachers to describe the activities a child is taking part in without minimising their benefits and contribution to a child’s wider education.

For parents who remain concerned that their child isn’t engaged in formal teaching, Ramchandani added that it can be beneficial for teachers to share some “knowledge about child development that we have as professionals that parents don’t always” have, particularly around the fact that children are capable of certain things at certain ages.

“A very simple example would be toilet training,” he said. “You wouldn’t toilet train your child at three months, because you know that babies are not capable of being toilet trained in three months. You would wait until they’re older, because you know that they would have developed the ability to respond then. And it’s the same with most aspects of learning.”

Plus, he added, research has shown that in some areas, such as maths, guided play helps children learn more effectively than direct instruction - another fact teachers could use to allay parental concerns about play.

“Even though direct instruction can be quicker and in some ways feels much more straightforward, allowing children the chance to explore and to engage with different shapes and supporting them to learn from that led to them having a better understanding of some of those fundamentals,” he said.

Encouraging play at home

But it’s not just what happens within an EYFS setting that is valuable - of course, good play happens at home, too. So what can teachers share with parents about how to make home play as beneficial as possible?

The key takeaway for parents is that “play goes at children’s pace”, he said, so adults should be guided by the child, playing with them on their terms. To do this well, adults must pay close attention to what their child wants and needs from play.

He cited one of the PEDAL centre’s research studies, Healthy Start Happy Start, which aims “to promote parents’ ability to notice their children’s cues” by helping them “slow down, notice their children’s communication and respond to them”.

The first children who participated in the trial when they were aged 1 to 2 have recently turned 8, Ramchandani said, adding that his team found the intervention “reduced behaviour problems in children” to such a degree that “there’s still a noticeable difference in the children’s behaviour at the age of 8, which is quite a remarkable, sustainable effect”.

“If we take that and use that to help support parents, we can make a real difference to these children’s lives,” he added - and play sits right at the heart of that.

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