CHILDREN with experience of divorce are staging plays to educate classmates about parental break-up.

Youngsters from Oxford’s Windmill Primary, Wood Farm, Bayards Hill and St Andrew’s schools will perform four plays to all Year Six pupils at the schools today.

Each of the performers will have had personal experience of divorce, involving themselves, friends or family.

The Walking on Eggshells project, run by Oxfordshire Family Mediation and WhatMatters Theatre, aims to bring the “taboo subject” of divorce into the limelight.

Michael Baum, 10, who attends St Andrew’s, said: “It is good to understand the experience of feeling what it’s like having your family split up.

“It’s a sad experience.”

Fellow pupil Peter Vickers, 10, said: “There are a few people in our class whose parents aren’t together.

“I’m a little bit nervous about the plays, but really excited.”

The plays include the story of a young boy who becomes addicted to television after his parents’ break- up, while another concerns a child who spends separate weekends with different parents.

Oxfordshire Family Mediation spokesman Martha Beale said: “The idea of Walking on Eggshells is to create an opportunity for young people to think about how separation can affect others.

“It is about thinking about how parental separation can change someone’s behaviour, and about how to support friends.”

The plays were created by writer Susie Stead in a series of workshops with the pupils which encouraged them to talk about their experiences.

Ms Beale added: “Parental separation is really a very taboo subject and we are trying to get it off the page to get people talking about it. Quite a lot of the time, they don’t tell friends or family about how they are feeling.”

Co-director Hugh Turner, from WhatMatters Theatre, said: “The children have been great. We have been taking them out of classes for one day a week so we have had a period of concentrated work.”

The theatre company has previously tackled subjects including bullying and drugs.

Mr Turner said: “This felt like a natural stage because it is another of those areas which gets occasionally touched on, but it is not something schools would naturally talk about.”

A discussion will take place after the performances.