Play, leisure and intentionality: why choice still needs pedagogy

One of the most persistent misunderstandings in Outside School Hours Care is that choice means the absence of pedagogy.

A child building an elaborate cubby after school. A group of older children negotiating the rules of a handball game. A young person choosing to sit alone with a drawing pad after a noisy day. A mixed-age group inventing a performance, abandoning it, returning to it, and reshaping it over several afternoons.

To an untrained eye, these moments can look informal, incidental or simply recreational. To an OSHC educator, they are often where the richest work of school-age care is happening.

OSHC already has a clear place within Australia’s National Quality Framework, with My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia providing the nationally approved learning framework for school-aged children. 

The opportunity now is to use that framework with confidence in the context of school-age care. Rather than trying to make OSHC look like another setting, we can become more precise about the pedagogy that is already present in children and young people’s play, leisure, relationships, routines and choices.

MTOP V2.0 gives us an important language for doing this. One of its most significant shifts is the practice now named “Play, leisure and intentionality.” 

This is not just a minor wording change. ACECQA’s update summary explains that previous practices connected to learning through play and intentionality were brought together to strengthen the relationship between play, leisure and intentionality, including both educator intentionality and child or young person intentionality.

That distinction is crucial.

In OSHC, intentionality is not the same as constant adult direction. It does not mean every moment must become a planned activity, every interaction must be documented, or every experience must be steered towards a predetermined adult goal. In fact, over-directing 

OSHC can weaken the very qualities that make school-age care valuable: agency, friendship, rest, recreation, humour, autonomy, negotiation and the right to have time that feels meaningfully different from school.

But the opposite is also true. Respecting children and young people’s choice does not mean educators step back so far that pedagogy disappears.

Choice still needs pedagogy.

It needs educators who understand when to enter play and when to protect it from 

interruption. 

It needs educators who know when a group needs materials, space, time, a boundary, a question, a provocation or simply permission to continue. It needs educators who can recognise that a child’s decision to do “nothing” may be a meaningful act of rest, regulation or recovery after the demands of the school day.

In OSHC, intentionality often sits in the conditions educators create.

It is in the way the room is set up before children arrive. It is in whether older children have spaces that respect their growing independence. 

It is whether children can return to projects across days, or whether everything must be packed away because the room is shared. It is in whether active play, passive leisure, solitude, social connection, risk, creativity and cultural expression are all treated as legitimate parts of the program.

It is also in the educator’s relational judgement. An intentional educator might notice that the same child is repeatedly excluded from a game, and support the group to renegotiate entry rules. They might see that a high-energy game is becoming unsafe, but instead of shutting it down, they help children redesign the boundaries. They might recognise that a child who is tired does not need encouragement to “join in”, but a quieter invitation to belong on their own terms.

These are pedagogical decisions.

They may not always look like teaching in the school sense. They may not always produce a neat photograph or a tidy planning story. But they are deeply connected to children and young people’s wellbeing, learning and development.

This is where MTOP offers a useful way of noticing what is already happening. Its five Outcomes are broad enough to help educators recognise children and young people’s wellbeing, learning and development across the whole life of the program. 

ACECQA describes the Outcomes as capturing the integrated and complex wellbeing, learning and development of children and young people, while recognising that children and young people in school-age settings have choices, opportunities to collaborate, and varied ways of engaging in play and leisure.

That means OSHC educators do not need to translate every experience into school-like learning. We do not need to turn a cubby into an architecture lesson, a friendship group into a social skills program, or a soccer game into a formal assessment opportunity. Instead, we can use the Outcomes to notice what is already there: identity, connection, wellbeing, confidence, involvement, communication, collaboration and contribution.

There is a professional discipline in this noticing.

It requires educators to know children and young people well. It requires teams to talk about what they see, not just what they planned. It requires Educational Leaders to help educators move beyond activity lists and compliance language towards richer conversations about play, leisure, relationships and agency.

The MTOP planning cycle also supports this broader view of practice. ACECQA describes the cycle as a process for recording, responding to and supporting children and young people’s experiences in school-age care settings. Importantly for OSHC, the steps can occur “in the moment”, throughout the day or over time.

That is a powerful point for our sector.

OSHC planning is not only what happens before children arrive. It is also what happens when educators listen, observe, respond, adjust and reflect during the lived flow of the session. The plan may begin with children’s ideas. It may shift because the weather changes, a friendship issue emerges, a child brings new knowledge into the space, or the group’s energy tells educators that the afternoon needs a different rhythm.

This does not make OSHC less professional. It makes the professional work more responsive.

Recent broader ECEC work from the Australian Education Research Organisation has also highlighted intentional teaching as a key practice, while noting gaps in the beliefs, knowledge and practices required to enact it well. For OSHC, we need to read that conversation carefully. Evidence from early childhood settings can inform us, but it should not flatten the distinctive conditions of school-age care.

Intentionality in OSHC must be understood through OSHC’s own rhythms: short sessions, mixed-age groups, shared school environments, transitions between school, care and home, and children and young people who often arrive needing both connection and release.

That is why “play, leisure and intentionality” is such useful language. It holds together ideas that are sometimes treated as opposites. It says that children’s self-directed time matters. It says leisure matters. It says educators’ professional decisions matter. It says children and young people also bring their own intentions, expertise, cultures, interests and plans.

For providers and leaders, this has practical implications.

If we want intentional OSHC practice, educators need more than templates. They need shared language, reflective conversations and professional learning that helps them recognise the pedagogical value of everyday moments. They need time to discuss children and young people’s play, not only incidents, routines and risk. They need QIPs and program systems that make space for the complexity of school-age care.

Most of all, they need permission to take play and leisure seriously.

A high-quality OSHC program is not one where adults control every moment. Nor is it one where children’s choice is used as a reason for educators to disengage. Quality sits in the thoughtful middle: educators creating conditions where children and young people can rest, choose, connect, explore, contribute and lead, with adults who are attentive enough to know when their presence matters.

Choice still needs pedagogy because children and young people deserve educators who understand the value of their choices.

MTOP gives us the language to say that clearly. Play and leisure are not gaps in the program. They are central to the program. Intentionality is not about formalising every moment of OSHC. It is about making the quality of school-age care visible, confident and deeply connected to the lives of children and young people after the bell.

Author

Belinda Wright is an Australian OSHC practitioner-researcher, instructional designer and sector leader with extensive experience across Outside School Hours Care, educator capability development and service leadership. She is the Founder and Director of Learning at Learn OSHC.

Belinda is currently completing postgraduate study in education, leadership and research, with a focus on educational leadership, workforce capability and quality practice in Australian OSHC contexts.