Right to play promotion in primary education in Portugal: impact on children's satisfaction levels and recess interactions

Play is a Children's Right and considering the time that children spend in the school context, it must be assumed as a privileged context for the promotion of this Right. A program to promote the Right to Play was implemented in primary education schools in Lisbon, with the aim of improving the play opportunities children have in the school context. The study carried out is quantitative and shares statistical data on the impact of the programme, on the dimensions of children's satisfaction and children's interactions that took place in the recess play spaces after the intervention. 357 children participated in the study, 188 girls (52.7%) and 169 boys (47.3%), aged 8.65 +/- 0.789. The sample was divided into two intervention groups (G1 and G2) and a control group (G3). A questionnaire, created by the research team (exploratory study: n=33; alpha=0.708; study sample: n=357; alpha=0.781), was used to collect the satisfaction index, alongside with the questionnaire Identification of activities and children's interactions in recess (Pereira, et al., 2016). The intervention groups demonstrate greater satisfaction with game floor paintings, but the same does not happen in regards to the materials. The materials used and the activities developed did not showed differences between the groups and is clear the prevalence of activities and materials connected to movement and not to other play types. So, the program was effective only partially, what can be explained by the fact that the program took place during a period of sanitary restrictions regarding COVID-19 pandemic.

Automated summary

Play is a Children's Right and it should be promoted in schools. A program was implemented in Lisbon to improve the play opportunities for children in primary education schools. The study found that the intervention groups showed greater satisfaction with game floor paintings, but there were no differences in terms of materials. The activities and materials used were mostly related to movement. The program was only partially effective, which may be due to the sanitary restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.