Social Life in School

Pupils' experiences of breaktime and recess from 7 to 16

Peter Blatchford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135711566
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Are breaktimes really just a time of violence and bullying that could be better used for working? Based on a unique and fascinating longitudinal study of a group of pupils from primary to secondary school, the author of this timely new book proposes an alternative view. He believes that breaktime plays an important part in children's social development, and through his gathering of pupil's own views on breaktimes over a period of ten years, we see how breaktimes offer children time to play; to develop friendships; to build social networks; to develop social skills and competence; to be independent from adults; and to learn to manage conflict, aggression and inter-group relations. Where else will they learn these important skills if not in the playground? What will happen in a society where these skills are not developed?

Chapter 1

Introduction

Breaktimes in schools are ubiquitous. Almost every school—primary and secondary—has some form of compulsory recreational break. In schools in Britain there will be a morning break and a longer lunchbreak and in some schools an afternoon break as well. Pupils’ experiences at breaktime can figure large in their overall feelings about school. As adults, when we bring to mind our school days, it can be images of the playground and events there that come to mind, as much as events in the classroom.

Despite my best efforts at recall, I have very few memories of my years in an east London primary school. I do, though, have an enduring memory of the midday break during the infant stage. I must have been about 6 years of age. The memory is of a seemingly endless time on a large playground. Most children appeared to have gone home for dinner because there were few other children around. There seemed little to occupy me except a concern, still tangible today, that an older and presumably wayward boy, should go home soon, or stand to lose his dinner and get into trouble. I am not sure why this memory is still with me, but I think it owed much to the contrast between the purposeful, supervised and safe activities of the classroom and my first experiences of the sometimes desultory, unsupervised and rather frightening time on the playground.

I cannot be alone in finding that conversation with my own children, when it turns to their day at school, is as much about their social lives and breaktime activities, as it is about more obvious school concerns. (It is true that my children know I am interested in breaktime behaviour; but this appears to reduce the likelihood of them discussing their own experiences!)

The main theme of this book can be stated at the outset: activities and social relations at breaktime are important because it is during this part of the school day that pupils are relatively freed from the attention of adults and the structure of the classroom. It is true that conflicts and petty squabbles can arise, and teasing and name-calling can occur. It is also true that some pupils can be taunted and bullied. But breaktime is also a time when friends, not always in the same class, can meet; a time when they can have fun and construct games in a relatively safe environment; a time when important social networks are formed; a time when they can fall out, but can also develop strategies for avoiding conflict. It is time when pupils can find freedom and a social life independent of the classroom, where the rules of conduct are more their own, and where activities stem from their own initiative.

It is therefore at breaktime that pupils reveal much about their social lives and their interests, and this is why I feel it is of interest to researchers as well as teachers and others working in education. Yet until recently breaktime, and pupils’ experiences of it, have tended to be taken for granted. There has been little research on the day-to-day experiences of pupils at breaktime and little recognition of the possible social and even educational value of informal and undirected activities in school.

Why ‘Breaktime’?

It is important to make the point that this book is concerned with experiences across the school years. In Britain the term ‘playtime’ is often used at primary level (4–11 years) whereas the term ‘breaktime’ is preferred at secondary (11–16 years). There has been more awareness of playtime and the use of school grounds at primary level, but we must not forget the continued experience of breaktime over the secondary years, and the important role it can play in pupils’ social lives. In this book I prefer to use the term ‘breaktime’ for all breaks including lunchtime because it is more inclusive and indicates that breaktime issues are of relevance through all the school years. Both are interchangeable with ‘recess’ which is the term preferred in the United States and some other countries, though recess is only likely to be experienced by the younger grades in US schools.

The Place of Breaktime in the School Day

My memory of a much younger self suggests a long lunchbreak. But, when young, many experiences have a timeless quality about them. How much time does breaktime actually take up? In a recent national questionnaire survey about breaktimes, which I will introduce shortly, we found that the total average time at breaktime, that is, the total time at morning and afternoon breaks and lunchtime was 93 minutes at the infant stage (5–7 years), 83 minutes at the junior stage (7–11 years) and 77 minutes at the secondary stage (11–16 years). This amounts to around 24 per cent, 21 per cent and 18 per cent of the school day for the infant, junior and secondary stages respectively. This means that the youngest children in school have the longest breaktimes. They also have a longer lunchbreak; in nearly half of the infant schools, lunchbreaks were 75 minutes or more long, and in 60 per cent of the infant schools they were 65 minutes or more. These results therefore suggest that my early impression of long infant school breaktimes was not entirely attributable to the tricks that time can play on memory.

There have not been international studies which would enable us compare the situation in different countries, but it does appear that breaktime occupies a bigger part of the school day in the UK than in many other countries and that, unusually, breaktime continues into the secondary school stage. There may be other differences. In the UK, ‘recess’ occurs at a fixed time and this may allow children to make more of, and even plan, how to use the time to interact with peers, play games and ‘work’ their social networks. In contrast, in at least some States in the US, the schedule for recess is more variable, and children may not be able to do this sort of planning (Pellegrini, personal communication).

If breaktime takes up a sizeable part of school day, the playground can also occupy a large part of the school grounds. A crow’s eye view of many schools would show school buildings dwarfed by surrounding asphalt and grass. For some of the time the school would be relatively peaceful, but at certain times of the day, the crow, who might just have been tempted to land on the school roof, would be made wary by the sudden intensity of action and noise, as children rushed out of the school. Hovering for a moment, the crow would notice children running and shouting, or sitting and talking. From the crow’s perspective at least, life in school would be most obviously enacted on the playground.

A Negative View about Breaktime and Breaktime Behaviour

So in temporal and spatial terms, as well as in terms of pupils’ experience, breaktime is a significant part of the school day. However, although difficult to quantify, the dominant view of children’s behaviour at breaktime appears to be negative, with a stress on unacceptable behaviour that can occur then. Several areas of concern have fuelled this negative view. One is a growing appreciation in recent years of the extent of bullying in schools and the harm that it can do to the victims. Initially inspired by the work of Dan Olweus (1993), there have now been a number of studies and initiatives in Britain (La Fontaine, 1991; Tattum and Lane, 1989; Smith and Sharp, 1994; Sharp and Smith, 1994). Most bullying appears to take place on school playgrounds (Whitney and Smith, 1993). Other worries have centred on racist name calling (Kelly, 1988; Cohn, 1988) and teasing (Mooney et al., 1991), which again can occur at breaktime. Views have also been influenced by violent incidents such as the murder of a British Asian boy in a Manchester secondary school playground. This incident led to the setting up of a public enquiry (Macdonald, 1989), because it showed how violence, possibly racially motivated, could erupt in school playgrounds. A more general influence has been concern about behaviour in schools, particularly expressed by the Teacher Unions and the press, that gathered momentum over the 1980s and culminated in the reporting of the Elton committee of ‘Enquiry into Discipline in Schools’ (DES, 1989). The Committee identified the lunchbreak as ‘the single biggest behaviour related problem that (staff) face’.

I first became interested in breaktime during visits to primary schools during the 1980s, when the subject of breaktime, and difficulties that arose then, often came up in discussions. In order to find out more about these difficulties and to seek some practical solutions, I interviewed primary headteachers and teachers in the south east of England. These were the basis of the book Playtime in the Primary School: Problems and Improvements (Blatchford, 1989). I found that staff had a number of concerns with pupil behaviour, for example, with what was seen as a large amount of needlessly aggressive behaviour. Less dramatically, many were aware of lower level but more common problems that can arise at breaktimes and that can spill over into the school. It was felt that problems could arise during the long lunch break.

In our national survey of staff views about breaktime, staff in primary schools appeared to be making more effort than those in secondary schools to improve behaviour, and this might explain why they felt behaviour at breaktime had improved over the past five years. Nevertheless in one in four schools, both primary and secondary, the view was that behaviour at breaktime had declined. There was a perception of less respect toward authority and the environment, an increase in aggression, and more individual pupils with difficult behaviour. There was also a clear view that behaviour out of school had declined in the last five years.

There is an allied concern with the quality of outside play—a general perception that children are not as constructive in their play as they once were. In the interviews with teachers, concern was expressed about children idling around the playground—not seeming to know what to do with themselves—and play being described as low level, and, for the boys, mainly tests of physical prowess (Blatchford, 1989). Traditional playground games were commonly seen to be in decline. One head felt that children had ‘lost the vocabulary of outside play’, and felt it appropriate to ‘teach’ children supposedly forgotten outside games.

Changes to Breaktime in Schools

What has been the consequence of this negative view about breaktime in schools? During my visits to schools since 1990 it seemed to me that changes were taking place, and that these changes owed something to a view of breaktime as a time when avoidable difficulties could arise. We could find no systematic information on breaktimes in schools, for example, on the time allocated to morning, lunchtime, and afternoon breaks and whether this had changed over the past years, and on supervision arrangements at breaktime, even though it is commonly recognized that major changes took place during the 1980s as a result of teachers’ industrial action. We therefore conducted a national questionnaire survey of breaktimes in primary and secondary schools in order to chart changes that had taken place over the five years up to the time of the survey (that is, a comparison of the 1990/1 and 1995/6 school years).

We chose a random sample of one in ten of all primary and secondary schools in England. Altogether we received questionnaires back from just over 60 per cent—representing 6 per cent of all schools in the country. What did we find? In around half of primary and secondary schools there had been changes to the length of breaktime. The main change was a reduction in time spent at lunchtime, along with the abolition of the afternoon break. The over-whelming reason given for this was to increase the amount of time spent on teaching. This was particularly true at secondary level. There is a view that breaktime can use up time during the school day when pupils could be working, and that teachers’ time and effort can be expended calming pupils down after returning from vigorous activities on the playground. This view might be expected to grow in strength in the UK in the context of growing competition between schools, school league tables based on examination results, and the consequent move to maximize pupil academic achievements. Interestingly, and even taking into account changes to breaktime, the survey also showed a tendency for the length of the school day to have increased over the last five years.

A second reason, given by staff, for the reduced time at breaktime was in order to reduce behaviour problems in school. Staff, especially at primary level, were adopting more deliberate policies with regard to lunchtime supervision. (Further details on the national survey can be found in Blatchford and Sumpner, 1996, 1997.)

What are the implications of these changes? Whilst it is of course appropriate for schools to be concerned with the amount of time spent on teaching and the demands of the National Curriculum, and on management of behaviour at breaktime, one unexplored side effect may be the impact these developments have on time when pupils of all ages can meet and interact in a relatively undirected fashion. What are the consequences of the current changes on pupils’ social lives? In order to answer this question we need a better understanding of a more fundamental question: what do we know about pupils’ social experiences in school, especially as manifested at breaktime? This book is an attempt to find some answers to this question. It also seeks an answer to an allied question: What value does breaktime have for pupils, and what might be lost by further reductions in breaktime? It may well be that decisions taken in the interests of improving academic and social behaviour have unexpected effects on pupils’ informal, social lives in school.

Before we leave the survey, it is worth recording two other changes to breaktime that have taken place. During the 1980s in England, again especially at primary level, there was a tendency for lunchtime supervision to pass from teachers to ancillary staff. In the national survey we found that ‘dinner ladies’, as they are often called, are now the main supervisors at breaktime at primary level, outnumbering teachers by six to one. Yet we found that teachers had a number of concerns about the effectiveness of such supervision, and this has no doubt contributed to their sense that problems can arise at breaktime.

Changes to the physical nature of the school grounds have also taken place recently, and these can be expected to have affected pupils’ breaktime experiences in school. Concerns about children’s safety have led to the dismantling of some older playground apparatus. Others have sought to improve the school grounds. With greater awareness of the sometimes bleak nature of school grounds, and the way this can contribute to troublemaking and boredom, has come an understandable interest in environmental projects, for example, involving the creation of wildlife and nature areas, and the installation and provision of play equipment (see Blatchford and Sharp, 1994). It is of course appropriate to consider the school grounds constructively, but improvements to the physical environment may paradoxically decrease other opportunities for pupils, for example, because of a resulting reduction of playground space, and constraints arising from limited access to equipment. Worries about school security, heightened by recent tragic events, also seem bound to constrain freedom of movement around school grounds.

Recent changes to the organization of the school day and in some cases to the school grounds seem, therefore, to have led to growing restrictions on pupils’ traditional freedoms to interact and play in school settings. This has also been noted in the US (see Pellegrini, 1995) and in Australia (Evans, no date). These trends can stem from a negative view about breaktime, as we have seen, which can be expressed in a deliberate anti-breaktime viewpoint (an anti-recess movement has been identified in the US by Pellegrini, 1995), but, more generally, they seem to derive from a situation in which breaktime is taken for granted—‘like the fabric of the building’ as I have said before (1989) —and understandably, given the turmoil in education over the past decade, not seen as a priority. At primary level there is more appreciation of the value of outside play experiences at breaktime, but by secondary school an indifference toward breaktime appears more widespread, perhaps because the value to pupils is less clear.

The situation with regard to breaktime in schools needs to be seen alongside changes to the opportunities for peer interaction outside school. There are signs in England and elsewhere that children of primary school age (5–11 years) have less opportunities out of school for interacting freely with peers (Hillman, 1993), and thus developing friendships and social skills. Children are far more likely to be driven to school, rather than walk. This emphasizes the likely importance of interaction at breaktime in schools, which for a growing number of pupils may be the main opportunity for them to interact and develop friendships.

Pupils’ Activities and Experiences at Breaktime: This Book

There have therefore been important cultural and social changes that appear to be influencing the nature of pupils’ free activities and social relations, both in and out of school. Though still relatively neglected by researchers and school policy, there are signs of a growing appreciation that much can be learned from studying children’s behaviour and experiences at breaktime (see Blatchford and Sharp, 1994; Hart, 1993; Smith, 1994, Special Edition on Role of Recess in Schools in Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 1996).

It is important to ask whether pupils’ behaviour and experience at breaktime support the generally negative view I have just described. But in seeking to find out what we do know about breaktime activities and experience we face a difficulty —not only has there been little rese...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Pupils’ Experience and Behaviour at Breaktime: A Review and Description of Research Approach
• Chapter 3: Pupils’ Views on Breaktime at 7, 11 and 16 Years
• Chapter 4: Changes in Breaktime Activities from 7 to 16 Years
• Chapter 5: Playground Games at Junior School: Changes over the School Year
• Chapter 6: Friendship Formation after Entry to Junior School
• Chapter 7: The Experience of Friendship at Breaktime at 16 Years
• Chapter 8: Pupils’ Views on Teasing and Name Calling at 7, 11 and 16 Years
• Chapter 9: Fighting in School
• Chapter 10: Conclusion
• References
• Index