Moss Valley Primary Academy Playground in Salford

Budget: 55k

Moss Valley Primary Academy is part of the Kings Academy Trust, it is a friendly and caring school where the children are kind, happy and hard working. They have an extremely dedicated staff team who work hard to ensure they provide world class learning opportunities to the children of Irlam. They are strongly committed to developing children academically, emotionally and socially. Their expectations are high, both in learning and behaviour.

Having previously worked with ESP Play on their early years outdoor area, the school got back in touch to discuss their next project, their special educational needs playground. They were in the process of renovating one of their buildings to provide a new space tailored to the requirements of their pupils with special educational needs when they identified that the outdoor space was also in need of renovating.

Our consultant met with David the Chief Operating Officer for the Trust, the existing space was small and only had a section of artificial grass and paving, there was nowhere for the children to ride their trikes and the area didn’t have any equipment for them to engage with.

The area is next to a public footpath so one of the priorities was to get some screening to provide the area with some privacy, another was to relocate some of the existing fencing onto the natural grass field to extend the existing space and create a larger area as well as adding a track for the children to ride their trikes on.

Suzanne, the Assistant Headteacher and SENCo, explained that the older children are always playing football so it would be ideal to have a separate space for them to play in, she said the children need space to run as well as places to hide, a separate quiet area away from everything else where they can sit and relax with books, also anything sensory for touching, planters for smelling and sound to stimulate their senses.

They needed to address the main issue of access to the area too, the children were having to go across the car park to access the building so they wanted to relocate an existing gate and add in a new pathway across the field to provide the children with a much safer access point from the main school building.

The installation needed to be done during the summer holidays so that it did not disrupt the children during term time. Initially, the school were going to have the work done over phases, however, they made the decision to stretch the budget to get it all done at once instead.

We installed two wooden multi-goal’s to create the new football area, a sensory area separated with picket fencing where they can explore their senses and reduce stress which includes planters where they can grow flowers and vegetables, a sensory play hut where they can hide, a story telling chair with seating where they can read and a sensory archway where they can watch the light shine through the different coloured panels. We added zebra crossings to the block paving roadway so the children can learn about road safety, installed the coppice tree trail for the children to climb on, some music panels and a sunken trampoline to help the children build core strength and enhance their co-ordination.

We have successfully transformed the area into a fabulous SEN outdoor provision, the school now has an outstanding outdoor facility for their children to use each and every day. The teachers were so excited and couldn’t wait for the children to see their new area, one teacher said “The children will never want to go inside now! How are we going to get them in, they will love being outside in their new area.”