New interest schools: OPAL school visit - Sacred Heart Primary, Coventry

How do we develop our best teams? How can playtime support us to foster our school's values in all our children - resilience, courage, tenacity, kindness? How do children get their playthings out and put them away? What are the solutions to foxes and sandpits?

See for yourself what an amazing playtime looks like at Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School!

11am-12pm OPAL introduction meeting

Hear about Sacred Heart's OPAL journey and learn more about the OPAL Primary Programme.

12pm–1pm Observation of playtime

Come and see a platinum OPAL playtime in action - ask the children about how they manage risk and the grown-ups about the changes they have seen.

Sacred Heart is a 400+ pupil Catholic primary school located in the east of Coventry City. They started their OPAL journey in 2021 and achieved their OPAL Platinum Award in 2023. Their play offer is outstanding, ensuring every child has a fantastic playtime every single day. The school has a large loose parts shed, a large, natural sandpit, a digging area, water play, den building, music, dressing up, arts and crafts, an extensive forest area and awheeled play area.

The strong play team is very committed to continually improving their play offer, led by a fantastic OPAL working group - and helped by their very supportive parents and local community. The level of purposeful engagement of every child at play time is awe-inspiring. Whether it is making a five-tiered wedding cake in the messy cafe, building dens in the woodland and sandcastles at the beach, dressing up as Spider-Man, banging symbols in the music hut, or simply pushing your mate around in a pushchair, there is not a single child not doing something fun, that they have chosen to do!

Parking is available at the Catholic church on Harefiled Road (CV2 4BT) - it is a five minute walk to Sacred Heart, Bray's Lane.

There are no public transport links available.

The school will provide tea and coffee.

The visit will be led by Rob Francksen (Director of OPAL Leicester Ltd).

Only two tickets per school. If you can no longer come, please let us know so we can release your place to another school.

The OPAL Primary Programme is an award-winning mentor supported school improvement programme that addresses all the areas that schools must plan for if they want to strategically and sustainably improve the quality of their play opportunities.

Find out more: www.outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk

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