Did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the harm to children’s education?

On paper, my DS (Y3 at the start) should have suffered academically. Dyslexia had recently been suspected.

In reality he thrived. He worked 1-1 daily online with his TA, who had recently undertaken a diploma in dyslexia. He discovered a love of books, initially on Audible and then reading books that interested him. Working on a computer helped him more than writing stuff down. He got to indulge his artistic side in ways that were not constrained to the syllabus.

(Incidentally, he is now in secondary school and his teachers were surprised at the suggestion of dyslexia and say they have no reason to think he may be dyslexic.)

DD, Y7 at the start, had been at her new secondary school just long enough to forge some solid new friendships when lockdown happened, so maintained those via WhatsApp. She has just started 6th form college and doesn't seem to have suffered any negative impacts as a result of lockdown especially.

I guess it is down to the individual child, just as it is with adults - I have friends at work that really struggled with lockdown (some of them are still noticeably affected now, their mental health took a real battering), whereas my line manager commented at my appraisal back then that I had thrived and launched myself at the challenge.

130k missing children? When you say no one knows where they are, do you mean as in because they could be home schooled or left the country, or do you mean missing as in they could be dead for all anyone knows?

I think we flung our children under the bus for the elderly and I said that at the time. No benefit of hindsight I was very vocal.

Even if you agree with the first lockdown we should have never have kept the schools closed right through until the summer holidays. Pubs were open but the schools were shut. Such messed up priorities.

That decision making was wholly responsible for pushing the inevitable second wave in to the Autumn/Winter 2021 when everyone went back to school and work and uni at exactly the same time. And lead to further more harsh closures and lockdowns. We had a vaccine then too..

Far better to have let them go back after Easter when we were going in to summer and we were through the first wave. There were always going to be waves. But trying to artificially control them means you get higher peaks exactly when you don’t want them (winter when everyone is low on vitamin D and other viruses are around). It was all a shit show.

History will judge very harshly how we treated our children and the effects and impact will last a very long time.

We knew quite early on that kids were not seriously impacted by Covid.

with google and the internet and wikipedia etc these days school is an outdated model , we educated and built society before modern schools,

Yes but we know which cohort wouldn’t have been saved is overwhelmed and quite frankly I don’t believe it’s worth adding 5 years to an elderly persons life in return for screwing up children’s mental health

No. Our son was in nursery and able to stay there which I am so thankful for! T would have done him harm to not see anyone for long periods of time.

Enough time has passed now though that children should be well back in/used to school again, and the majority of children are really resilient anyway

A lot of young teens missed important developmental stages and that has a trickledown effect.

In my opinion, no. Closing of schools in particular was a huge mistake. Massively let down our kids.

And anyone who started a thread about how miserable it was that schools weren't open was leapt on and accused of wanting to kill teachers. It was insane.

I think it did at first because many children including my son got into the habit of working at home, so getting back into a routine of going full time into school was very difficult, and days they didn't feel like tried to argue why they couldn't just work from home that day.

Lots of children missed out on gaining vital social skills too, but to be honest society appears to be going that way in general with the rise of phones.

Enough time has passed now though that children should be well back in/used to school again, and the majority of children are really resilient anyway.

I said what about damage to young people. The attacks were ferocious

This, it was a huge mistake in my view.

It was unbearable on here.

I once admitted I'd been to the supermarket twice in one day and was accused of being a murderer. I actually think Mumsnet was totally shit at moderating as well. So much violent language and misinformation.

The decision not to reopen schools in summer 2020 in England and Wales was a particularly bemusing one. Cases were down, and kicking the second wave closer to flu season was a risky choice. People had this weird idea it was all going to be safer come September. Why?!

Yes there should have been discussion

You could see even on here how impossible that was

It fucked a generation of young people over.

Children needing support already had long waiting lists and now they have to be at crisis point to be taken notice off and then still wait years for assessment protocols to be completed. Opportunities for early interventions were missed, aggravating needs.
This affects everyone because of the additional stretch on time and resources in the education system.

All children should have had the right to return to school in spring/summer 2020 after the initial wave subsided and all children should have had the right to meet and play with their peers in the winter lockdowns.

But those speaking up about it at the time were called names like "Granny killer"

The irony for my children was that despite months of lost education and socialising, care home rules and travel restrictions prohibited them from seeing their granny again; by the time restrictions eased, granny didn't know who they were anymore and died of her terminal illness shortly afterwards anyway.

Personally I think it's really important we have these discussions, as a society. We just need to factor in that there's lots we don't know yet. Things like, say, whether the lockdown era changes to the social contract on school attendance are the new normal and what impact that has if so.

The damage done to kids because they didn't socialise in groups was awful. I think we owe our children a huge debt.

I agree with this. It was a viable option put forward by some who were then vilified.
It should have been up for discussion and people should not have been called names, discredited or vilified just for having different opinion.
If anything, that was the biggest harm.

It wasn't about saving lives elderly or otherwise ,it was about not overwhelming the NHS ,so it could continue to be there for all of us .

I think the cost was too high

Absolutely not in our case. DS (ASD) was never able to return to school following all the disruption and four years on has struggled to get back on track with his education.

I think the figures show that countries that didn't lock down had no more excess deaths than those that did, don't they?

On some children. Definitely not all.

Since there is no way of knowing what the outcome would have been if lockdowns hadn't happened it's a pretty daft question.

The problem was you couldn't shield the vulnerable and keep schools open - too many vulnerable