Editorial: Playgrounds should be fun for fun's sake

Officially the government wants every child to have fun. Every Child Matters' enjoy and achieve outcome should make play a priority for children's services. But too often enjoy loses out to making every child achieve.

Without fun, life seems a pretty bleak prospect. Just over a week ago we published a quote from Sue Bohanna, secretary of the North Wales Brass Band (CYP Now, 12-18 September). The band is finding children rarely have time to practice since, as she put it: "Do these poor kids ever have a time at home when they're not being dragged somewhere?"

Yet our nation seems determined that every child must be using every spare moment to learn more. Even play itself is now talked about in terms of the cognitive, physical and social advantages children can get from it. It may be understandable that play, in order to avoid being sidelined in the fight for funding, now promotes itself as a way of delivering goals on health and social skills but should the idea of children simply having fun, really carry so little weight?