LISKEARD, England – Parents of students at Hillfort Primary School in Liskeard are fuming after headmaster Tim Cook banned kids from running on the playground to prevent possible injuries.

So far,  more than 150 parents of students at the school have signed on to a petition calling for officials to reverse course on the running ban, which was instituted last Tuesday, ITV reports.

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“Please lift the ban on running in the playground at Hillfort Primary School at lunch time break,” the petition reads. “Ensure that there is adequate funding and provision of suitable staff to safely supervise lunch break.

“Enable and empower children’s right and freedom to run freely through spontaneous, child led play, in the playground during lunch time break.”

The change, according to the petition, “is health and safety gone mad.

“Do not allow ‘health and safety’ to remove the liberty to spontaneously run in the playground during imaginative and child-led play,” it read.

The complaints prompted school officials to respond on the school’s website by explaining that the move is designed “to avoid the children being hurt and to enable them to have a more enjoyable playtime …”

The Sept. 30 post contends students can “run around freely” in certain areas of the playground, including the “ball court” and “areas of the main playground.”

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“What we have done is stop running directly across the playground where some children had been hurt by others running into one another,” according to the statement.

“Lots of new activities have been introduced which children can play on if they wish – these include Lego, toy cars, sand play in the tractor tyres, dancing to CDs, giant Jenga, drawing/board games/ reading in the quiet corner … amongst other activities.”

“Children are now more confident to play on the traditional playground games (e.g. hopscotch) which are in the centre of the playground,” the statement read. “We think this is because children know they won’t be knocked into.”

Regardless, parents are calling on school officials to find “alternative options to reduce risk, as required without removing liberty to move freely during play,” such as enlarging the playground, staggering lunch breaks to reduce the number of kids out at one time, “or other creative alternatives to removing the right to play freely on the playground,” according to the petition cited by the Daily Mail.

Cook defended the playground running ban when contacted by the news site, alleging the change has drastically decreased recess-related injuries since it went into effect.

“I sat down with some of my senior colleagues to assess the problem with children running across the playground and ending up in first aid,” Cook said. “We’ve tried to be a little more reactive and proactive and put in place eight to 10 lunch time activities for the children including a choir, sand play, and Lego.

“I left our Year Five class dancing to YMCA just last week,” he said. “Children can still run in the early years’ playground and we have two football courts which the children can run in.”

Cook claims the running ban only applies to running directly across the playground, but in the first three days “we have already noticed a 30 percent drop in first aid incidents and an 80 percent drop in behavioral incidents.”

Cook told the Daily Mail that school officials plan to keep the policy in place and monitor its progress over the next few weeks.

The Hillfort playground running ban, however, isn’t the first of its kind.

According to the Daily Mail:

It comes a year after Old Priory Junior Academy in Plympton, Devon, banned children from doing cartwheels and handstands at break times over safety fears.

Pupils at that school were told in June 2015 that they couldn’t perform ‘gymnastic movements’ in the playground after some children had been left with injuries.

Emma Hermon-Wright, the school’s interim headmistress, said she introduced the ban because the children were attempting moves ‘beyond their capability’.