No Hiding Places—A Review of Representations of Children's Right to Play in Schoolyards Across Wider Irish Educational Policies and Guidelines

Despite the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's emphasis on the major role of schools in providing for children's right to play, restrictions on children's play during breaktimes in schoolyards persist. A policy void has been highlighted in research examining the diverse interrelated nature of constraints on play rights in the unique context of schoolyard spaces. This research emphasises both the importance and limitations of policies and the need for further interrogation of broader educational policies as tools of influence in relation to play rights. This paper provides an exemplar of a critical review of national educational policies relevant to children's play in schoolyards in Ireland. The three-step review identified, extracted and charted representations of play during breaktimes in schoolyards from 24 legislative, policy and guidance documents. Lefebvre's (1991) theory of the production of social space informed the final analysis, focusing on the abstract representations of play in schoolyards, generating two themes: 1. No space for play—the prioritisation of supervision, safety and outdoor learning in representations of breaktimes in schoolyards and 2. Incongruence between inclusion rhetoric and a neglect of play rights. This review offers recommendations to progress the realisation of play rights in the Irish school context. It also contributes to contemporary scholarship on children's rights, highlighting the insights gained from examining the dominant ideas influencing priorities and regulating provision for play rights across educational policies.