Standing on the sidelines: What I learnt about life in the school playground

I’ve got a really vivid memory of me and my two best friends at playtime, ten years old, leaning with our backs to the wall, chatting. A couple of feet away some other girls are doing the same. In the corner where our building meets the lunch hall, there’s another group of five or six girls sitting on the floor playing clapping games. Actually, the entire red brick wall of the school building is lined with girls standing, sitting, and chatting. It’s a normal playtime. It’s not that we don’t have a playground, we do, but there’s no space for us.  

It's ironic because at this age I was quite sporty. I was playing football regularly with a local grassroots team, walking to school, and swimming occasionally. So why when it came to playtime did I spend hours and hours, days in fact of my childhood, leaning against a brick wall after being sat at a desk all morning?

We had two main primary school buildings, one for the younger children in year three and four, and one for those in year five and six. They were laid out in an L shape. In the rectangle carved out by the L was a concrete floor painted in faded white with the outline of a football pitch. So there was plenty of space outside, but for some reason it always used to feel cramped standing against those brick walls.

On reflection, as a girl who was already playing football in a team, I was probably relatively calm when the ball would come flying towards me and my friends and smash against the wall, that’s if we managed to react quick enough. They didn’t do it intentionally, it wasn’t the boys’ fault. But they would always stampede after the runaway ball, before retreating to their space.

Their space.

That’s how we saw it. That football pitch, which was essentially the entire playground was not a space for us. We didn’t belong there. This isn’t just my opinion looking back, this is my lived experience of seeing other girls trying to step over the sidelines, trying to find space to run around, to burn energy like all the boys were doing. Trying.

Occasionally, very occasionally, a girl would be honoured with the opportunity to stand in ‘net’ for a team. Great, an opportunity to continue to stand against the wall, but this time with the boys’ permission.

After watching the tenth girl try and integrate herself into the game and be ignored, pushed out, and excluded, I was convinced that the faded football pitch, the playground, was not a space for me and my friends. The boys charged after the ball, sprinted from one net to another, shouted to each other, worked as a team, let off steam. In fact, the boys did absolutely everything that children should do at playtime.

The playground is an important part of school and education, in fact, I’d say that its role in our personal development might be even more important than the classroom lessons we have at primary school. So what did the playground teach me and my friends about life and society?

I learnt that we were supposed to be stationary, static. To stand or sit around and talk quietly to our friends . I learnt that the boys need more space than us. That they need to run around and ‘let off steam’ after sitting down all morning. I learnt that an hour a day of sport and physical activity was really important. For boys. I learnt that girls need to move over. Make space for boys.

This was my personal experience at school. But have playgrounds changed today? What are we doing to ensure girls have a chance to run around after a morning of sitting at their desk? How are we making sure girls learn that their role in society and life is so much more than just standing on the sidelines?

We need to intervene, to manage the space occupation of playgrounds, to enforce safe spaces to empower girls to run around and empower boys to encourage their active participation.

What was your experience of the playground like? Or what are you doing to make it better?

#school #playground #sport #activity