A government report due out this week will reveal that one out of every 4 children aged between eight and ten has never played outdoors without adult supervision.Parents basically seem too afraid to let their children enjoy the sort of play they did when they were young. The government will pledge to spend £225 million to be spent on 3,500 new playgrounds and 30 adventure play areas with trained supervisors. And local councils will be given the power to introduce more 20mph driving zones to allay parents' fears of children playing outside when there is heavy traffic.
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'We know that 80 per cent of children prefer to play outside and 86 per cent of parents agreed that on a nice day their children would prefer to go to the park than watch TV,' education secretary Ed Balls told a Sunday newspaper.
'Yet children spend less time outside than they would like and less than parents did as children. In our consultations parents told us this is because there are not enough safe places to go - and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that parents think their children are safer playing inside on a computer than outside.'
March 2008
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