Sport, Health & Wellbeing
From concrete to connection: UC research guiding school transformations
When Catherine Glover took over as Principal of Kiama High School in 2017, she knew the grounds needed some work.
Despite the school being blessed with two ovals for students to play on, she said there were a number of spaces that seemed “unwelcoming”.
One was a space reserved as a safe place only for Year-7s, but was concrete and bare.
A Â鶹´«Ã½ workshop as part of a large “Schoolyard Greenprint” study gave her the spark she needed to make it better.
The national study looked at the role schoolyards play in student wellbeing, and how their designs could be improved to better meet a diverse range of modern student needs.
Lead researcher Dr Gweneth Leigh, a landscape architect and Research Fellow in the Mental Health Policy Unit at UC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) said the schoolyard was an “overlooked opportunity” to improve teen mental health, which is in crisis globally, especially since COVID-19.
“By rethinking our schoolyards, we can create spaces that help young people to connect, recharge and learn,” she said.
The research team spent nearly two years conducting extensive research, engaging with over 500 students and 1,500 stakeholders across areas of design, advocacy, governance, education and health.
Dr Gweneth Leigh
The resulting Schoolyard Greenprint reports provide evidence-based practical guidelines to help schools move away from the typical, outdated design and instead create spaces that help teens navigate their formative years and the huge social, physical and emotional changes that accompany them.
Through frontline research, it acknowledges the diverse experiences and needs of high school students, including neurodivergent students who need space to self-regulate, LGBTQIA+ and gender diverse students who may not always feel safe, First Nations students who need connection to Country, and the need of many to be active or play, but also not feel childish.
The Greenprint, a group of four documents, devotes one volume to a design guide with case studies and ideas – from quiet, sensory areas, to age-appropriate play equipment to take risks on, like parkour or rock climbing walls, to walking loops or even just moveable seating to enable an escape from the heat.
For the Kiama High principal, participating in the Greenprint research was exactly the inspiration and justification she needed for change.
At a workshop with the research team, school leaders were asked to take three photos of their schoolyard: positive spaces, negative spaces and spaces that they aspired to change.
Catherine took a photo of her Year-7 space.
“The transition from primary school can be really difficult for some students and they might not be able to articulate it specifically, but it can help if they've got a space that they can go to that they own, that they feel is there for them,” she says.
“It should be an area they feel safe and secure and want to come to – and the space was just not welcoming. You can see that from the photos.”
She says the Greenprint team’s presentation gave an ideal “big vision” she knew her public school budget couldn’t afford.
But then she saw photos of small things other public school principals had done in parts of their yards and left the meeting feeling a “moral imperative” to do something about her unwelcoming space.
“Not only did the group inspire me to actually just start, just do something, now it's guiding how I think – that it doesn't have to be big, it can be small and it can be done in stages.”
Glover set about putting some round tables and seating in the Year 7’s area and had some handball squares painted in bright colours.
The result was a smaller, out of the way space that was now inviting, even to older students who also wanted to get away from the main schoolyard.
The Greenprint’s Senior Project Manager Hannah Richardson said the result showed even modest updates can make a big difference to how students feel and use a space.
Hannah Richardson
“The Greenprint isn’t just for large new school builds. It includes real examples of schools making small, achievable changes like an outdoor music pod at Dapto High, or a native garden at J J Cahill Memorial High, both funded by the school community,” she says.
Gweneth says Australian students spend about 10,000 hours at school, and while adults can choose to leave a space that doesn’t meet their needs, school students don’t have that choice, so good design is crucial.
“For many students in our urbanising cities, the schoolyard is the place where they spend time outdoors. And growing research shows us that time outdoors is good for us – it provides us with cognitive calm,” she says.
“But these school spaces are often concrete, they're grass, they're sport-focused, and they can be hot.”
While schoolyards have the potential to be a natural antidote to the stresses of adolescence, poor design can also add to the stress.
Finlay Robinson, was just months out of high school when he joined the research team, leading the Youth Voices group while also studying a degree in psychology.
He says he was “really lucky” to have gone to a school in Canberra with large grounds and a variety of spaces, but there’s one feeling he vividly remembers.
“It was the anxiety of not knowing where your friends are when you come out for recess or lunch, and how that anxiety created a need for your own space, your own spot in the schoolyard where all your friends would congregate.”
Finlay Robinson
He – like many people they spoke to while researching – had not given the schoolyard much thought, but realised its impact through hindsight.
“I was confident in school and had some good friends, and so I had a really great experience. But at the same time, I had friends who had not so great an experience.
“So I think one of our strongest findings was that even if the schoolyard works for people like me, that doesn't mean the schoolyard works.”
Hannah said incorporating students as co-researchers in the Greenprint study was critical to the project and a priority from the beginning.
“We wanted young people’s experiences to shape the questions we asked, the findings we developed and the guidance we produced.”
The researchers identified a range of “pain points” for students when it came to their schoolyard – metal seats too hot to use in the afternoon, desirable shady spaces at the school edges were out of bounds, ovals and sporting facilities commandeered by more dominant personalities, or corridors causing anxiety without clear sightlines of who might be around the corner.
While school buildings have evolved over the last 30 years to reflect advances in environmental awareness, technology, and teaching practice, the template for schoolyards haven’t. And despite growing student enrolments, the size of schoolyards is actually shrinking.
“We undertook an aerial analysis of Australian schoolyards from around the country, and it revealed some really startling trends,” Gweneth says.
“Those schools constructed in more recent years, say between 2011 to 2026, are nearly half the size of those schools built 60 years ago.
“At the same time, natural shade on our school yards is also disappearing.”
The researchers mapped a sample of Australian schools to develop a series of school “types”. They found they averaged one tree per 56 students and most fit into one of nine designs, all favouring traditional competitive sporting facilities for their outdoor space, which tended to appeal most to younger, male students.
Finlay said he was unsurprised by that finding.
“When you're hearing that girls find it harder to engage in physical activity than boys, that's pretty clear, I don't think many people would try to argue that their lived experience was different to that.”
He was more surprised by hearing some other perspectives that may not be so obvious to many, from students willing to reveal their vulnerabilities.
“I was reading story cards from 12-year-old boys, talking about how they feel a space makes it difficult for them to make friends with girls, or neurodivergent students talk about how difficult it is to find space for themselves. I think it's easy to say, ‘yeah, I know that happens’, but when you hear their voices coming through and the detail of their experience, that was really important to me.”
The final volume of the Greenprint is an Engagement Toolkit, which includes a range of practical activities professionals can use to draw out student insights, rather than focussing on student wishlists.
For the five youth researchers, that was an important inclusion.
“Giving young people the opportunity to advocate for themselves truly leads to better outcomes,” Finlay says.
“It's really important that principals and designers and P&C groups are able to access this document and to use it, but as the Youth Voices, we were always trying to also ask: ‘how could a Year-10 student pick up this document and say, I want to make genuine changes to my schoolyard’.
“So I would love for every school to have an opportunity to use the Greenprint, but it would really mean a lot to me if students were able to pick it up and to advocate for change for themselves.”
The Schoolyard Greenprint documents are free and available to download online.
The research was funded by Hort Innovation, a not-for-profit research and development corporation for Australia's horticulture industry through its Frontiers Healthy Living Fund with co-investment from the Landscape Foundation of Australia and contributions from the Australian Government.
Words by Fleta Page. Photos supplied.