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Play Matters: Play advocacy and sharing of knowledge.

Writer's picture: Dr. Aaron BradburyDr. Aaron Bradbury

‘Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.’

(Friedrich Froebel, Early Education, 2021)





I have recently set up a cooperative of voices which the early childhood sector has collectively come together to demonstrate the power of play for our children 0-8 years. I didn’t want to write about the division within the sector on whether play based learning is a thing or not, I don’t think we have division, we just want the best for our children and collectively we can achieve that if everyone collaborates, values, and listens to each other. For me and for so many others within the early childhood sector play is something in which forms the fibres of our children’s development.


Play and how we plan for play needs to have both adults and children working collaboratively together, providing spaces of enrichment, joy, and learning.  Early years has become one of the main foci of education in England under the last 14 years of Conservative government. There have been several shifts in the frameworks for early years provision since 2010, developing a tendency to more formal learning. Early years educators received a further blow in 2017 with Ofsted’s Bold Beginnings report (2017), which promotes earlier exposure to more formal pedagogies, an attack on the concept of free-flow and the notion of children-initiated learning. Furthermore, a report by Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes (2017) indicated that early years teachers were concerned about an increase in pressure to group children by ability in order to meet curriculum expectations in the future. Play can be viewed as a counter-discourse to this emerging, more formal context. Children-centred principles and practices are embedded within the Froebelian approach and should be applied to early childhood education and care in England today, self-directed play serving as a means of expressing imagination, creativity, and knowledge of the world. By nurturing their inner lives, as well as developing and expressing their understanding, children benefit from symbolic activities such as art, music, dance, and imagination. Studies have shown that a broad-based early years curriculum, which emphasises physical, social, and emotional as well as language and communication development, contributes positively to the learning of subjects such as reading, writing and mathematics. (Bradbury, 2024).


Play Matters, which many of you may have seen developed across social media platforms has quickly turned into a call to action to discuss why play really does matters. This is where Play Matters is going to give an alternative discourse to what is seen as a top-down approach and focus on what is needed for children in the now, giving them a progressive opportunity of play enriched with understanding why play really matters, backed up with research evidence. Early learning is important, no one is disputing this, and we need to make sure that play is planned with both the child and adult in mind by always giving opportunity for developmental growth, but making sure that the unique child is at the centre of this is crucial.



The call to action has given us fire in our tummies to share knowledge and advocate for play. We now have over 100 professionals from across the early childhood sector, including those professionals who have put play pedagogy through a child centred lens, including teachers, headteachers, social workers, psychologists, academics, health visitors and play therapists. There is a growing number of organisations who are coming to support the narrative that Play Matters too. We collectively have agreed that the document we are producing is one in which will have no financial gain, done solely through volunteering of people’s time and will include research and practice which will be threaded throughout. We are also keen to keep play at the forefront of early years practice and by doing so keeping the voices within this and the movement of Play Matters a positive and a collective one for the good of our children. We are all very excited about producing this document.


A little more information on what the working groups are focusing on are listed below:

Play, love and nurture; Play and joy; Play, brain development and executive functioning; Play therapy; Play and physical development/outdoors; Play and SEND; Play and quality; Play and sustainability; Play for under and over 3's; Play, equalities and inclusion; Play and the early years curriculum; Play and school-based settings.

We are looking forward to sharing with you the document which will be out in March 2025. We have seen how something for the sector and by the sector really does matter and we are keen to continue this approach.

Please continue to share your thoughts, and advocacy of play.

Dr. Aaron Bradbury


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