Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL) is a community interest company (CIC) dedicated to providing services to schools and organisations in England and Wales to improve the quality of play opportunities for all children. OPAL staff have expertise in teaching, school improvement, landscape design, project management, play and strategic planning. 

The OPAL Primary Programme offers schools a structured process, with mentored support provided for up to two years and many resources, to enable schools to permanently change both their environment and their culture to enable provision of amazing playtimes every day.

To date, OPAL has run programmes in over 1000 schools throughout the whole UK and has recently expanded to Spain, France, Poland, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.

At OPAL we have seen just how much of an impact improving play can make to a school. We are not just talking about playtimes being a bit less bother or about children being a bit happier. We are talking about cultural transformation.

When you address a need that is so fundamental to children's physical and mental well-being as play, and you do it well, it is impossible to think of how you ran a school and didn’t do this.

Our vision is that every child in every school has an amazing hour of high-quality play every day – with no exceptions. If one child is not enjoying playtimes, then things still need improving.

We want every school to plan for, resource and evaluate the quality of their play provision as if it were an important human right, essential to all aspects of children’s development and a source of joy and happiness that every child can access because it is all of these things'.

For more information about OPAL play, please see: Home - Outdoor Play And Learning

• OPAL Play at St Michael's OPAL Platinum School