We are delighted to announce that on 10th November 2025, our school was awarded OPAL Platinum Status - the highest accolade available! 

Over the past eighteen months, we have worked tirelessly to transform play across our school. With the guidance and support of the OPAL programme, our staff, pupils, and wider community have reimagined playtimes, creating opportunities that are more creative, active, inclusive and enjoyable than ever before.

This success is a testament not only to the dedication and commitment of our staff, but also to the enthusiasm and imagination of our children, who have embraced new ways to play, explore, and learn together. From loose parts play to garden adventures to scooters and a sensory snug, our playground has evolved into a space filled with imagination, movement, and discovery.

Achieving OPAL Platinum School status means our play provision is recognised as “outstanding” – and we could not be prouder of this accomplishment. We believe that play is a vital part of every child’s development, and this award highlights our commitment to ensuring all pupils experience the very best opportunities every single day.

A heartfelt thank-you goes to our entire school community – staff, families, and our wonderful children – for helping us reach this remarkable milestone.  We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to the volunteers from Nissan who have supported us in transforming our outdoor spaces and providing the fantastic resources that our children now enjoy. 

What is OPAL?

We believe that every child in our school should have access to high quality play each day, particularly given that 20% of a child's time in school is playtime (equivalent to 1.4 years of primary school). In order to help us achieve this, we signed up to the OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) programme in February 2024. The OPAL programme is founded on the principles and values of playwork, providing a wide variety of play opportunities from the sixteen types of play. To date, OPAL has run programmes in over 500 schools throughout the whole of the UK and has recently expanded to Canada, France, Poland, New Zealand and Australia. They use knowledge and expertise gathered over seventeen years of testing and development to support schools to change both their environment and their culture in order to enable provision of amazing playtimes every day.  

Our OPAL Journey 

We were so excited to begin our OPAL journey and the children enjoyed their first experience of an 'OPAL playtime' when they came back to school after the Easter holidays in 2024.  Since then, both yards and the garden area have all undergone an astonishing transformation. Our vision for OPAL playtimes is ambitious and so it will take time for that vision to become a reality, but we are well on our way and every step has been met with overwhelming enthusiasm and positivity from the children.  Mrs Lennon is our OPAL Curricular Lead.   

Donations

Many of our resources are donated by kind parents and members of the public.  This helps us to make our play as sustainable as possible.  We are always on the lookout for loose parts including buggies, pans, traffic cones, fancy dress clothing, guttering and piping.  Please contact the school office or speak to your child's class teacher if you have anything you can offer. 

How Can Parents/Carers Help?

In addition to kind donations, we would also be delighted to hear from any parents/carers who could offer expertise in procuring resources from industry and/or anyone who could spare some time to help improve the school grounds/construct resources. Please contact Mrs Lennon via the school office if this is something you are able to help with.  

We are incredibly grateful to volunteers from Nissan and our local community who have helped develop a number of zones.

 

Further Information

For further details about our amazing playtimes, please see the documents below.  Our most recent OPAL adventures will be on our school Facebook page and in the newsletter.