SBO Merlijn
Marthe van den Boer is the director of SBO Merlijn, a school for special primary education in The Hague’s Laakkwartier district. “Our school is located in a paved, polluted neighbourhood. Our children often grow up in poverty, rarely spend time in nature and do not play outside much. So if we can make a difference for the entire neighbourhood with our schoolyard, that is very valuable.”
Van den Boer hopes to have a new, green schoolyard before the summer. “We did not want too many pieces of equipment with a predetermined purpose; there needs to be room for imagination and discovery. Because many of our children have social and emotional developmental delays, the schoolyard also needs to include a quiet area where they can decompress, as well as a section where they can engage in sensorimotor activities. There will also be crawl-through paths, a water pump, an insect hotel, an outdoor kitchen, a traffic playground, a tipi, an outdoor classroom with a stage and raised vegetable beds.” A small section of paving will remain, because ‘young children also need to be able to ride scooters and draw with sidewalk chalk’.
Dreaming of green-blue schoolyards
In 2023, the province of Zuid-Holland awarded subsidies to eleven schools, driven by the dream of enabling all 300,000 children who attend school in Zuid-Holland every day to learn and play in a green-blue schoolyard. Provincial Executive Mariëtte van Leeuwen: “Together with schools, municipalities and other parties, we are working on a schoolyard revolution. A network committed to transforming schoolyards in Zuid-Holland into green-blue schoolyards that contribute to the health of the pupils and the entire neighbourhood. We also exchange knowledge and experience with other municipalities and water authorities and work together with partners in the Groene Cirkel Groene Gezonde Stad.”
The province’s 2023 subsidy programme will not be continued this year, but more and more municipalities are offering schools a helping hand, such as the municipalities of Westland and Rotterdam. This is hardly surprising when you consider that a schoolyard often serves not only the school itself, but also many other children living in the neighbourhood. SBO Merlijn is therefore involving various local parties in the construction and maintenance of the schoolyard. For example, pupils from a nearby school who are studying green-space management will help maintain the schoolyard.
Does the school director have any tips for other schools? Van den Boer: “You simply have to get started. It was on our agenda for a long time too, and there are always reasons to postpone it. But it can be done. We were told: everything in your neighbourhood just gets destroyed anyway. But I believe that by taking the first step, we can give the neighbourhood confidence that it really is possible here.”