I am against the use of play as a 'priority' medium of learning in schools (kleuteronderwijs e.d.) because it is grossly unfair to disadvantaged children.

(Sinds 1976 bestrijden we al de stelling van het EGKO -ervaringsgericht kleuteronderwijs van Ferre Laevers - dat 'vrij spel' de centrale werkvorm moet zijn in het kleuteronderwijs)

Here are the reasons:

Firstly, play is incredibly noisy.

Those who arrive at reception year not speaking at all or with poor vocabulary and enunciation should not be condemned to have their lack of speaking and listening skills entrenched simply because Jemima and Jonte love to role play being veterinary surgeons. The children who can’t speak need to hear the best sentences, phrases and words and with the best enunciation; this means the teacher needs to be teaching (and this could be simply reading a lovely story and explaining things along the way) and no, working with a group while the rest of the class hoof it up in the role play areas is not good enough. There needs to be a super quiet and calm backdrop, just like those advantaged children get to experience at home when Mummy and Daddy read them a lovely story and explain what everything means.

The above point also reminds me that we really need to ensure that the teachers in reception year, or even in nurseries, need to be very well-read and confident mathematicians so that the disadvantaged children get to experience the erudition that matches what advantaged children experience at home from their well-educated parents.
I think many young educators in particular are unaware that the parents of advantaged children will quite happily talk about CERN at the dinner table, or even talk about the mating characteristics and genetics of snail populations when pottering about in the garden (hell I know I have!), yet teachers insist on bringing the level of conversation down with limited vocabulary and ‘relevant’ topics in the classroom.

Secondly, play as a medium for learning is incredibly inefficient.
Those disadvantaged children need to catch up, not fall behind, but if ‘learning through play’ were instigated for them, then we risk that they might not learn anything at all (particularly if they lack the vocabulary and general knowledge to access what Jemima and Jonte have rustled up) or even worse the wrong thing.

Thirdly, a teacher can only ‘play’ with a small group of children at a time.
So, while the teacher is getting excited that Jemima and Jonte have asked for clipboards and hardhats so that they can pretend to be health and safety supervisors at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the disadvantaged children have resorted to arguing with each other, or experimenting with life-physics by stress-testing the lego area with a toy hammer. OK, so these are extreme examples of free play, but even if you use the examples of guided play whereby the teacher has set up different stations where children play ‘maths’ or ‘writing’ using the number bonds or phonemes taught first thing in the morning, the teacher cannot be at every station at the same time ensuring that 100% of the children are on the right track. Maybe the teacher could take the time to explain the purpose of each station? That would take ages and just imagine if all that time explaining ‘how to play at the maths station’ could be used to actually teach?

Finally, if play-learning is such hard work, then why not expend all that energy efficiently?
Research shows that the most efficient way of teaching and learning is through the use of explicit instruction. But wait, this means the children would need to sit and listen which is surely too much for their little bodies? I see no problem with this and it’s what Jemima and Jonte are expected to do at the dinner table anyway: not being allowed to talk over the adults and to listen carefully. Why not give disadvantaged children this opportunity to develop self-control, concentration and listening/questioning skills?

So, instead of play as a go-to medium of learning, let’s have play as a medium of play (or a reward for working hard) and teaching as the main, equitable medium of learning.