Ripping up the playground rule book delivers incredible results

Picture a school playground without rules. One where kids freely climb trees and where risk and adventure are encouraged. Where no area is out of bounds and children are left largely unsupervised. Surely conflict and bedlam would prevail. Or maybe not, as one Auckland Primary School has discovered.

Bruce McLachlan, the Principal of Swanson Primary School abolished the playground rulebook as part of a successful university study, with incredible results. “We’ve noticed a drop in bullying, a drop in conflict amongst the kids and a drop in serious accidents in the playground,” McLachlan explains.

Swanson Primary signed up to the study by Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and Otago University two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play and reducing obesity. Eight New Zealand schools were involved in the study. Some schools relaxed the rules in the playground; but Swanson Primary took the experiment a few steps further by abandoning the rules entirely.  Read More...