Ghost Children

[PleaseStopSayingHuBbY]

Really sad article outlining effects of lockdown on young people.

www.spectator.co.uk/article/ghost-children-the-pupils-who-never-came-back-after-lockdown/

lots of children thrived at home, and some of those families chose to keep to that arrangement, as their children were doing so much better.

Its not "sad" for those children

No, I'm sure it's not. The article isn't talking about those children tho.

There's a podcast on BBC sounds on it. The point is a lot of parents basically used lockdown to dispense with any ideas to bother getting Thier kids educated

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fb25nv?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

There's a child at DD's school with the same SEN as her. During lockdown we took the time to catch DD up, really try to get her academics together, capitalise on not having a school system to navigate. It was shit and hard work but since lockdown she's excelled. She was really struggling before.

Her classmate's mum let his day and night flip, they never felt the house, he didn't get exercise or any schoolwork done. He's back at school but doing horribly. Behaviour is dreadful and he can't deal wth the work or people. He is really struggling now.

Some children will never recover from it. It does take a village for the children with challenges. And they had no village.

DD thrived and is a happier, healthier child because of it.

There are something like a third of children persistently absent from secondary school in some age groups. It's a lot more than parenting, and it's a lot more than lockdown, though that for some exacerbated matters or was a catalyst for issues to start.

But yeah, sure, continue to fine parents who would love their kids to just go to school and are at their wits end with anxious kids with unmet needs and their families breaking down as a result. Continue to have massive academy schools with a one size fits all approach to learning and discipline, continue to blame, fine and gaslight parents, continue to underfund state education, continue to deny access to CAMHS, continue to underfund mental health services, continue to underpay and undermine teachers and have them leaving the profession in droves. Continue to stick your head in the sand, vote Conservative, congratulate yourself warmly on the internet on you had a quite nice lockdown and how little Olivia has actually simply thrived since then, not like their little oik classmates. Continue to live in a smug little bubble and never know how it might be for others.

It's definitely an issue - I have 4 or 5 friends who have had real difficulty getting kids back into school post covid, mostly neurodiverse kids, who are another group having particular difficulty.

I still understand why the government locked down - it seemed the best option with the information they had at the time and remember there was no mitigation and no idea how to treat severe illness then either,, as it was so new. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be putting money and effort into dealing with unintended consequences

This is the government that opened pubs before schools. It shows how much they value education. I think children have been so badly let down by the government, schools and in many cases their parents. I was saddened by how willing people were to accept school closures and dire remote provision.

Some children do do better with home education. They have parents able and willing to facilitate this.

Other parents use "home education" as a smoke screen for abuse and/or neglect. It was like that before Covid, its like that now

And of course... there are children who just can't cope with school and have parents doing their best.

You can't generalise.