Picture this scene and have a guess at the age of the children being described.

Some pupils are rocking on “yoga balls” - like space hoppers without the handles - as they puzzle over sums or read their favourite book. Pop music plays as a girl drops what she is doing and casually walks over to her teacher’s desk and picks up a tablet computer. Another girl dabs at six colours of paint in a palette as she puts the finishing touches to her masterwork, while swigging from a water bottle.

A boy who has been working on a Meccano spaceship suddenly finds the classroom all too much and scoots off to the “den” - a sky-blue sheet draped over a circular table in the corner of the classroom - to find refuge. All the while, the children’s teacher moves quietly around, antennae attuned to any signs of upset, helping individual pupils who are struggling and subtly suggesting some activities they might like to try.

In a P1 classroom, this might not seem such a surprising scene nowadays. The idea of play-based learning is increasingly finding favour in Scottish schools, but it is usually associated with the youngest primary pupils - a way of smoothing the passage between nursery and the traditionally more formal arrangements of primary school.

The scenes described above, however, are from a P7 classroom at Broughton Primary, Edinburgh, where something bold is being attempted. Teacher Charlotte Birse-Stewart is behind the idea, which has been playing out since the start of the school year. It boils down to this: if play-based learning is good enough for P1s, why not P7s, too?

It all stemmed from one of those eureka moments. Birse-Stewart had been observing a P1 class in her school last year - she has never taught a P1 class - and was struck by the difference between it and her P7 classroom. “I absolutely loved what I saw with their play-based learning … I loved the atmosphere, the cooperation, the range of activities and the mobility around the room,” she says.

The P1 children, she recalls, were engaged, relaxed, motivated, having fun and proud of their learning - “they wanted to share and show other people” - and, despite her best efforts with P7s, they made her classroom seem static and staid by comparison.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the P1 classroom was how “independent with their learning” these five-year-olds were, as they moved freely around their environment - in contrast to what Birse-Stewart was used to with older pupils, for whom there was a tendency to keep “bums on seats”.

In seeking to emulate the P1 learning environment, some changes were quite simple: removing a lot of furniture and breaking up the big, blue rectangular desks that dominated the classroom to give P7 pupils more room. Birse-Stewart wanted “an agile learning space” and “free flow within the classroom”.

Among the pupils who stand to benefit most from this approach, she believes, are those with ADHD: previously, there might have been “movement breaks” at set times, perhaps involving dancing in front of a smartboard video, but she feared that these could be counterproductive, that their enforced nature risked heightening anxiety. With “free movement naturally within the class”, however, such pupils move around when they feel the need to.

‘Rich, respectful and real’

Birse-Stewart’s smallish classroom can feel, to the uninitiated, overwhelming at first with its sheer volume of activities, resources and colour. Your eyes dart from a box of Scrabble tiles, to coloured balls of wool, to “story cubes” - dice with suggested scenarios for stories, such as “A school at night” or “Investigate a strange noise”.

There is fabric and wastepaper in boxes, a “graffiti wall” where pupils write their emotions, a box of multicoloured Post-it notes in a corner, a basket of newspapers, a display on Scottish politics, a small forest of colouring pens in beakers - and much else.

All this choice “can be overwhelming”, acknowledges Birse-Stewart, but, she adds, when pupils go to secondary school (and, eventually, leave school altogether), they are going to have to navigate a world of endless choice. And there is order amid all the choice - much of it determined by the pupils. It was the children who decided on some of the furniture and the activities that go on here, such as a two-week Stem challenge, in which they had to design and build a model house that floated on water.

“High school’s scary - they’re all terrified of it,” says Birse-Stewart. But she is hopeful that the independence and responsibility pupils are afforded in her classroom will give them the confidence they need for its demands.

Adopting a more play-based approach seems a no-brainer to her - why should P1s be entrusted with more freedom over their learning than P7s? - but it remains rare at this level. Greg Dempster, general secretary of primary school leaders’ body the AHDS, says: “It is not unheard of but it doesn’t seem to be in any way common.”

Aline-Wendy Dunlop, an early years and transitions expert at the University of Strathclyde, says: “As a primary and nursery teacher, my dream was to be able to take what I knew about early childhood pedagogy into the upper primary.

“My work with young children had shown me how interwoven play, hands-on activity and learning are.”

For Dunlop, play-based learning offers “rich, respectful and real-world opportunities for learning” - but is “challenging” for teachers, who must involve pupils more in planning. “I think upper-primary children are well placed to bring their own experience to collaboration, respect for others and important cognitive challenges where they pose real questions about what they wish to know, and can plan together a range of ways to work out answers to these questions,” she says. “This is playful pedagogy: thinking, setting personal and group challenges, planning together, using first-hand materials, being creative.”

Birse-Stewart shakes her head at any suggestion that a play-based approach with older pupils is somehow frivolous, chaotic, wasteful or indulgent. There is still structure in the teaching week, which children pick their way through via a system of smiley faces (for things they must do at some point), thumbs-up signs (for recommended tasks) and stars (non-essential activities).

On essential learning, she works with groups of six at a time and, with the current set-up, she has more time for one-to-one learning. “Everything they’re doing is to P7 level - they’re still working to textbooks. It’s just much more dynamic now,” she explains.

Behaviour has improved, Birse-Stewart says. Last year, there was more chance of a pupil “kicking off” and, whenever she had to deal with such an incident, other pupils, knowing that their teacher’s attention was diverted, could become distracted or act up themselves. Some children might be very good at maths, but not at sitting attentively through a 40-minute maths lesson. They now have the option to come in and, for example, do some art before their maths. (A 40-minute lesson, however, is still standard for essential learning in the class.)

‘Forced dichotomy’

And what about the impact on Birse-Stewart’s experience of being a teacher?

“I love it - it’s transformed teaching,” she enthuses. “It’s much more fun to plan. Now, I can come up with lots of different activities that everyone can access and it makes it a much nicer experience to teach.

“I can really get to know children, because I’m getting to know them one to one, chatting, playing games with them. And I love seeing how some of my less confident children at the beginning of the year have developed.”

It is new territory, however: Birse-Stewart has found little evidence of similar approaches being taken with P7s elsewhere in Scotland, and she stresses that it takes “quite a lot of resourcing [and] a huge mindset change”.

Another problem is a stubborn “forced dichotomy” that one early years expert despaired of when writing for Tes last year: Nicky Clements, director of early years for the Victoria Academies Trust, in the West Midlands of England, pointed to the “stand-off between the supporters of play-based learning and those who favour direct instruction” (“Playing to pupils’ strengths in the early years”, bit.ly/PlayDichotomy).

While this may not be quite so apparent in Scotland, misconceptions about play as being somehow haphazard and lacking in rigour still persist.

Another Tes writer and teacher who favours play-based approaches, Sue Cowley, has said that focusing on play does mean that teachers have to “hand over a measure of control”, but this does not mean there is no role for them: “The adult’s hand is always present, gently guiding the child to explore his or her environment, watching over the child to manage risk and offer advice and ideas.”

There is a tricky balance to be struck, however, according to Professor David C Geary of the University of Missouri’s department of psychological sciences. In a Tes Podagogy podcast in March, he drew a distinction between “primary skills” - which children need no guidance or instruction to acquire - and “secondary knowledge”, which is “much harder to acquire” (bit.ly/GearyPod).

Children do not naturally seek out secondary knowledge, he says - they need explicit instruction. “In addition, if kids are just working together, playing, the default mode of the brain is probably very active. But if you need to learn, say, algebra, you really need to focus on what the teacher is doing or what is in the book,” he explains.

“That is why a lot of the child-directed stuff does not work so well. They are going to slip into the default mode, and concentrate on things that are much more interesting to them. It is more pleasurable to be in the default mode.”

A few miles from Broughton Primary, Susannah Jeffries, depute headteacher at Canal View Primary School, says: “I think it is incredibly exciting that teachers across the full age range of primary school are looking to implement a play-based approach.”

Canal View has become known for forging ahead with play-based learning in the early part of primary school (“Calm, not chaos, rules at school where play is king”, Tes Scotland, 26 January 2018). Jeffries says this is essentially about “an environment that enables children to develop and deploy creativity skills, curiosity, open-mindedness, imagination and problem-solving skills”.

She believes this is “just as vital for the oldest children as it is for the youngest”, so her school has this year started exploring a more play-based approach with older pupils. Already they have seen motivation improving and that “these practical, creative approaches have enabled the children to make connections between their learning and the skills they need for life and work”.

At council level, there is support for bringing such approaches to more schools: Edinburgh education convener Ian Perry praises the “really successful and stimulating approach” with the P7 class at Broughton Primary, which has had “amazing results” - he cites greater confidence, organisational skills and creativity.

This enthusiasm must be handled carefully, however, warns education consultant Isabelle Boyd. The former secondary head and local authority assistant chief executive says that “all areas of the curriculum can be enriched and developed through play”, but that it must be “purposeful and guided” and that there are risks in embracing it only at specific stages.

“For a full play-based curriculum to work at other stages, it would have to be a whole-school approach, otherwise there is the potential for disharmony and disengagement in later primary stages,” says Boyd. “If children are engaged in full unstructured play in one primary stage, even if successful this can be a problem if in the next class they are expected to be more sedentary and deskbound.”

Back at Broughton Primary, headteacher Maria Gowans says: “We’re still trapped a bit in the Victorian age of classrooms and schools. I think one of the other things we’re not very good at in schools is capturing creativity - we kind of knock it out of kids as they go through school, rather than develop it.”

‘Really cool’

Although Gowans has been in the post for only two weeks when she speaks to Tes Scotland, she already sees “very exciting” opportunities in Birse-Stewart’s P7 class, but adds: “We need to be able to prove that it’s having an impact.”

So, attainment data will be a major factor in how far the school goes with play-based approaches at all age levels - although Gowans says that, even if attainment has not improved as hoped, it will be a matter of “fine-tuning, not throwing out of the window” what has been happening in the P7 class this year.

For now, this P7 class remains an outlier - Birse-Stewart has struggled to find any other schools doing exactly the same thing.

So, what do her pupils think about this new way of doing things?

One boy says he prefers to get hard tasks out of the way first, and now that he has the freedom to do that, he has become better at managing his time: “You get to choose what you want to do and when to do it; you don’t just have to do one thing at one time.”

Another boy feels that this year, he has “a lot more independence” - he particularly likes taking one of the yoga balls all around the class with him, to sit where he wants to and do any tasks at any time - which “gets you ready for high school”.

A girl likes being able to move to another part of the classroom if she gets “sick” of someone, that she can ask a friend for help instead of having to ask the teacher, and that she can fetch a pen whenever she wants.

Another girl says: “It’s good because you can take more time with things and try to do it to the best of your ability.” She particularly likes that, now, if she is really absorbed in a book, she can read the whole thing in one go rather than having to stop to go on to another activity.

She adds: “Everything’s really cool in P7. If you’ve had a really bad breaktime, you can come in and do something that’s not too stressful, instead of doing, like, a big maths lesson or something.”

But there is an important caveat: “We still need to do all our smiley faces - it’s not like we’re slacking off.”

For more on embracing creativity, see pages 24-29

Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 21 June 2019 issue under the headline “All work and no play?”