Delegates heard from Government minister Yvette Cooper, the Department for Education and Skills, and Frank Dobson, who chaired the recent Play Review, as well as representatives from a number of interested bodies.
What emerged from both the morning presentations and the afternoon seminar sessions was that these crucial 51 minutes of every waking hour children and young people spend outside the formal education setting are not properly reflected in policy or provision.
The importance of play and non-structured activity in the development of emotional intelligence, in the ability to negotiate, co-operate and assess risk is rarely acknowledged, but the growing anxiety about young people's health and particularly increasing obesity rates may influence the debate and delivery. Whether this puts these issues in the proper setting of a coherent vision of how society in general and young people in particular view childhood and adolescence is another matter.
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