"People have been incredibly supportive" - says Derbyshire headteacher as school receives national award putting it in top 1% of schools in the UK

Staveley Junior School has been awarded the Platinum OPAL play award – meaning it falls into the top 1% of schools in the country with respect to delivering excellence in play.

OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning), a national programme endorsed and supported by Sport England, aims to improve the play time at schools across the UK.

Sue Parkes, the headteacher at Staveley Junior School, said: “Our children and parents have really taken OPAL to heart. Parents have made regular donations of items which make our play offer even better, from pallets through to old kitchen equipment for our mud kitchen.

"One of the best afternoons we have had recently is when our parents came and joined us for a play afternoon. The sun shone and everywhere you looked there were families playing together and best of all there was a lot of laughter.”

The OPAL programme offers schools a structured process, which has supported them to permanently change both their environment and culture, to enable provision of amazing playtimes every day.

OPAL addresses all of the areas schools that must plan for if they want to strategically and sustainably improve the quality of their play opportunities.

Children have the chance to engage in a variety of different play activities every single day. The Staveley school grounds are being used to their full potential and the children take great delight in using the naturally rich play environment.

A walk around their grounds finds children engaging in all sorts of different play from den building and tree climbing through to the chance to roll across the grass in a giant tractor tyre.

Some children are dressing up and engaging in imaginative play, some are busily creating in the mud kitchen while others are teaching themselves to balance on the large cable reels that have been donated.

Children are building important skills around understanding and managing risk and knowing their own limitations so they can keep themselves safe both inside and outside of school.

The award has been a result of an 18-month intensive mentoring and development period. There has been a significant community element to building this offer with donations of both funding and play items from both local and national organisations.

Mr Parkes added: “We have been so grateful to all the companies that have made a donation to our funding and have given items for the children to use. One company donated four enormous construction tubes for the children to slide down into our sandpit and even delivered them all the way from Wales. People have been incredibly supportive.”

This is just the beginning of the OPAL journey at Staveley Junior School – the school intends to continue its play journey and is all geared up to offer an Open Day to other schools that might be interested in finding out more. The whole school community is excited to see what happens next.