Getting more from school grounds: sharing places for play and exercise

Where people live and whether they can access open space affects how much exercise they do. As Victoria grows and more people live closer together, sharing more school grounds can benefit many more people in the state's largest cities.

Shared school grounds are unevenly distributed across Melbourne. School grounds in the outer northern, western and south-eastern suburbs are less likely to be open for community use. People in these suburbs are also less likely to have an alternative sports ground nearby or to get a healthy level of regular exercise.

Supporting schools in these areas to share ovals, courts and playgrounds can provide the greatest community benefit. There are not large enough parcels of land for many new community sports fields. School grounds are an under-used community asset, especially in areas with limited open space.

Key findings

• 1.7 million Melburnians cannot access a community sports field within a 10-minute walk. If all government school grounds were open, nearly half a million of those people would have access.
• As Melbourne’s population grows, the city will need about 900 extra hectares for all types of open space, including spaces for recreation, by 2036. Purchasing the land to provide this could cost up to $3 billion.
• About two-thirds of government schools already make their outdoor areas available for community use. But shared school grounds can have challenges such as higher maintenance and repair costs because they are used by more people, more often.
• Supporting more schools to open outdoor areas can make better use of existing government land. It is also likely far cheaper than building separate facilities or bearing the social and health costs of leaving communities without access to spaces for play and exercise.

Recommendations

Our recommendations to the Victorian Government focus on helping schools to share outdoor areas with the community. They are:

• prioritise which government school grounds could deliver the greatest benefit if they were shared with local communities outside school hours
• give these schools extra help for maintenance if they voluntarily share their grounds outside school hours
• offer funding for upgrades to incentivise shared access outside school hours.