Name: Current schools: OPAL school visit - Sacred Heart Primary, Coventry
Start: 2026-02-10T12:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-10T14:00:00+00:00
Location: Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School

Current schools: OPAL school visit - Sacred Heart Primary, Coventry

Play makes up 20% of children's primary school life. See how this OPAL school is making playtime a key part of their day.
About this Event

Play makes up 20% of children's primary school life. How do schools plan for this 20%? What are the roles of the play team?

How do we develop our best teams? How can playtime support us to foster our school's values in all our children - resilience, courage, tenacity, kindness? How do children get their playthings out and put them away? What are the solutions to foxes and sandpits?

Agenda

12pm–1pm Observation of playtime

Come and see a platinum OPAL playtime in action - ask the children about how they manage risk and the grown-ups about the changes they have seen.

1pm–2pm OPAL schools networking

Discuss your journey with other OPAL school colleagues - share your successes, top tips and ways to overcome some of the challenges.

About Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School

Sacred Heart is a 400+ pupil Catholic primary school located in the east of Coventry City. They started their OPAL journey in 2021 and achieved their OPAL Platinum Award in 2023. Their play offer is outstanding, ensuring every child has a fantastic playtime every single day. The school has a large loose parts shed, a large, natural sandpit, a digging area, water play, den building, music, dressing up, arts and crafts, an extensive forest area and a wheeled play area.

The strong play team is very committed to continually improving their play offer, led by a fantastic OPAL working group – and helped by their very supportive parents and local community. The level of purposeful engagement of every child at playtime is awe-inspiring. Whether it is making a five-tiered wedding cake in the messy cafe, building dens in the woodland and sandcastles at the beach, dressing up as Spider-Man, banging symbols in the music hut, or simply pushing your mate around in a pushchair, there is not a single child not doing something fun, that they have chosen to do!

Additional information

Parking is available at the Catholic church on Harefiled Road (CV2 4BT) – it is a five minute walk to Sacred Heart, Bray's Lane.

There are no public transport links available.

The school will provide tea and coffee.

The visit will be led by Rob Francksen (Director of OPAL Leicester Ltd).

Only two tickets per school. If you can no longer come, please let us know so we can release your place to another school.