Galley Hill Primary School receive Platinum OPAL play award

We are proud to say that on 2nd October 2025, Galley Hill Primary School and Nursery achieved the Platinum Standard for OPAL play, the highest accolade available, putting us in the top 1% of all schools nationally with the quality of our play provision.

Here at Galley Hill Primary School and Nursery, we are committed to ensuring quality play opportunities are available to all our children. We believe that play is essential for physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual development of each child. Most of our best childhood memories are from playing outdoors, climbing trees and exploring the wide world around us. OPAL gives us the opportunity to give those memories to our children. OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) is all about using naturally and man-made resources to allow children to be inspired and creative at playtime.

An OPAL approach promotes a more inclusive play environment in which all children can feel comfortable to express themselves. Our OPAL journey began in Autumn 2022 since this time, we have quickly transformed our outdoor environment. Our children love the new outdoor opportunities that OPAL offers with so much more for them to do, no matter the weather! From playing with tyres and digging in the sand pit, to enjoying imaginative play in the woodlands or cooking up a storm in the mud kitchen, OPAL offers an exciting alternative to the standard playground activities.

Through this approach to play children are not only more active at lunch or break times, but they are also having the opportunity to further develop life skills such as cooperation, team work and problem solving. They are becoming motivated and enthusiastic builders, engineers, explorers and designers.

We must thank our school community and Murphy’s construction company who have donated time and resources to help build and develop the play space for our children at school.