Key Stage 1 Curriculum

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for introducing this debate, and the 106,082 people who signed the petition, of whom 182 are my constituents. I pay tribute to the campaigners, who are here today, for their important work on this topic.

There is a huge body of evidence that demonstrates the paramount importance of play in early childhood. When my two-year-old next door neighbour visited for tea over the Christmas recess, he announced as he stepped through our door, “Where are the toys?” If any of us has any doubt about the paramount importance of play, that is a particular experience that he was looking for on his visit and looks for wherever he goes.

I pay tribute in particular to the work of PEDAL—the centre for research on play in education development and learning—which is a part of the faculty of education at the University of Cambridge. PEDAL is dedicated to amassing evidence on the importance of play and is developing a wealth of resources for practitioners in all aspects of childhood. PEDAL highlights the important role of play in developing relationships and secure attachments for young children, in supporting physical and mental health, good development, learning and communication, and in building good foundational social relationships.

I have had the privilege of visiting many early years settings and primary schools in my constituency and across the country, and I have seen many brilliant examples of play-led learning, particularly in the many schools that that now have forest school programmes that give children the opportunity to go into the outdoors and learn from each other and the natural environment, outside of the formal classroom. The best teachers and early years practitioners make play a part of the curriculum, and work to make all learning fun.

This topic is relevant to aspects of the Education Committee’s current and recent work. We are midway through a big inquiry into the evidence on what makes for good support across the early years. We have undertaken some work to scrutinise the curriculum and assessment review—a topic I will return to—and last year we undertook a major piece of work on SEND, focusing on creating inclusive learning environments for all children and looking at the evidence on the very high number of children who are being failed by a system that is not properly geared to meet their needs. As part of that work, we identified transition points in education as requiring particular attention as the Government consider SEND reform. The transition from the early years foundation stage to key stage 1 is important in that respect.

We are also undertaking work on child poverty. Although play is important in education settings—in formal settings—in early childhood to reduce the attainment gap, access to high-quality play experiences in communities is also vital. My constituency is in the eye of the storm of the housing crisis, with so many families with young children who are not adequately housed and are living in overcrowded, cramped accommodation. For those families in particular, being able to access high-quality play equipment in their local community close to home is vital to their children’s development.

I will briefly pay tribute to a much-loved and much-missed Member of this place, the late right hon. Frank Dobson, who was passionate about play. Under the previous Labour Government, he helped to deliver a step change in investment in play equipment in our communities, and he continued to correspond with me about this topic until he was very near to the end of his life. The erosion of council funding under the Conservative Government for 14 years of course made it harder for councils to keep pace with investment in this space, and in recent years we have seen too many examples of play equipment that has fallen behind best practice and even fallen into disrepair.

I welcome the curriculum assessment review and its focus both on restoring creative subjects to the heart of the curriculum and on reducing the burden of assessment. These are important reforms and they are very welcome. Of course, the curriculum is a framework; it does not dictate individual lesson plans or teaching methods. Consequently, I hope that as the Government continue to develop the guidance around curriculum reform, there will be creative responses to these reforms that give some prominence to play, particularly in key stage 1.

Finally, I will highlight a conversation I had recently—last week, in fact— with the Estonian Education Minister. As we know, Estonia’s education system achieves excellent outcomes. In the early years, it focuses almost entirely on the social and emotional development of children in early childhood as the foundation for more formal learning. The Estonian Education Minister told me, “School is tough in Estonia. We expect children to work really hard. We give them a great deal of content. But they do that on a foundation in the early years that means that they are good co-operators and collaborators with their classmates, that they are good at working in teams, and that they are good at managing their own emotions to engage with learning to the fullest extent.”

This Government have an ambitious programme of reform for education, and a clear commitment both to making childhood better across our country and to investing in the services that support children, particularly in their early years. I hope that as the Government bring forward more detailed guidance to support these reforms and move towards the publication of the schools White Paper, which we expect shortly, the work of the petitioners on the topic of play in the key stage 1 curriculum will be at the forefront of their thinking. Play is important for children’s development, for their engagement in education and for discovering a lifelong love of learning, and the evidence to support that view is very strong.

[Several hon. Members rose—]