If Play is a Child’s Right, Why Is It So Difficult to Sustain?

Play is a fundamental children's right under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1998) and is central to learning, wellbeing, creativity and participation. Despite this, accountability demands, policy pressures and attainment-focused agendas continue to constrain opportunities for meaningful, self-directed play in educational settings (Bradbury et al., 2025). This raises an important question: if play is a child's right, why is it so difficult to sustain?

For many practitioners, the challenge is not whether play matters, but how to protect and nurture it within increasingly complex educational environments. Sustaining authentic play requires more than providing resources or allowing time for free play. It demands a fundamental shift in how we think about leadership, participation and learning itself (Scollan, Lee, Boyd & McLeod, 2026).

Traditionally, leadership has been associated with designated roles and adult authority (Northouse, 2025). However, when viewed through a rights-based and participatory lens, leadership becomes something much broader. It emerges through relationships, dialogue, listening and shared meaning-making (Farini & Scollan, 2023; 2025). In this view, leadership is not something adults do to children, rather, it is what adults do with children. Therefore, leadership is relational and agentic through interaction, collaboration and play.

Positioning children as capable agents enables them to shape their experiences, contribute to decisions and influence their environments. In this context, play becomes a democratic space for agency, participation and meaningful learning. These actions and approaches lead to a Sustainable Pedagogy and practice.

Sustainable Pedagogy (Scollan, Boyd & Lee 2024) requires practitioners to become reflexive and responsive leaders. It involves questioning assumptions about childhood, learning and power, while remaining attentive to children's perspectives and experiences. Effective leadership is therefore less about directing others and more about creating the conditions in which children and adults can learn, participate and flourish together.

Three interconnected ideas help enable Sustainable Pedagogy (Scollan, Boyd & Lee 2024). 1) Leadership from Within (Scollan 2023) encourages practitioners to reflect on the values, beliefs and experiences that guide their decisions. 2) McLeod’s (2019) Reflexivity Framework provides a practical process for critically examining personal beliefs, values and assumptions. 3) The Sustainable Pedagogy Bridge (Boyd, Lee & Scollan 2024) offers a space for practitioners to pause, question and reimagine Sustainable Pedagogical (Scollan, Boyd & Lee 2024) encounters.

Together, these concepts invite us to rethink what quality education means. Rather than accepting the outcomes-driven approach to quality, it is suggested that quality emerges through participation, listening, creativity and shared responsibility. Children are enabled when they feel heard, valued and empowered to influence their own learning journeys.

Ultimately, sustaining play is both an educational and ethical commitment. It requires courage to challenge established routines, openness to children's ideas and a willingness

to embrace more democratic ways of working. If we truly believe that play is a child's right, then perhaps the challenge is not whether children can lead through play, but whether we as adults are reflexive enough to make the right decision at the right time. Are you?

by Kerrie Lee, Dr Angela Scollan, Dr Diane Boyd and Dr Naomi McLeod