There’s a moment in the school day that, for a student with a motor disability, can be the hardest one: recess. The playground, built for running and ball games, is often simply out of reach. That observation, hardly new but rarely tackled in a structured way, is behind “Dentro de Juego: Más Deporte, Más Igualdad” (“Inside the Game: More Sport, More Equality”), a pilot project led by the Canary Islands government’s education department under Poli Suárez.
In its current phase, the initiative covers seven schools in Gran Canaria that belong to the network of centers with preferential support for students with motor disabilities: secondary schools Bañaderos, Siete Palmas and Gran Canaria, along with primary and early-years centers José Pérez Pérez, Claudio de la Torre, Poeta Francisco Tarajano, La Garita-Alberto Manrique de Lara and Bañaderos. The project started in the final term of the 2025/2026 school year and will run through the first term of 2026/2027, meaning it carries straight into September, when thousands of Canary Islands students head back to class.
The stated goal is to turn schoolyards into more inclusive, participatory spaces through sport, making sure every student, not just those with disabilities, takes an active part. The program includes workshops on inclusive playgrounds, awareness talks and hands-on activities aimed at both students and teachers, with particular attention to raising awareness about disability and functional diversity.
A less obvious angle of the project is where disability and gender intersect: the initiative builds in a perspective meant to make visible the specific barriers girls with disabilities can face, both in sport and later in social and professional opportunities. That’s not a minor detail, given that the education system is running a parallel program, “En la cancha de la Igualdad” (“On the Court of Equality”), which started on March 11, 2026 in secondary schools on La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, focused more specifically on gender coeducation through sport.
Both programs sit under the Canary Islands’ 2023-2028 Equality and Coeducation Plan, which aims to build a school model that weaves a gender perspective into different corners of school life, from body diversity to preventing appearance-based bullying.
What remains to be seen, and will be the real measure of whether the pilot works, is whether these seven schools become a model other islands adopt once the project moves past its experimental phase. For now, the most telling detail is that the initiative doesn’t stop at a one-off event. It follows students across the turn of the school year: a playground that was already a little more inclusive in June will need to be even more so come September.
