Y10 - the forgotten Covid year?

[kittybloom]

Any Y10 parents out there? I really feel this year group is forgotten about in terms of the impact of schools shutting and COVID. A friend mentioned to me once that Y6 and Y7 are very important transitional years and we can't underestimate the importance that our children missed out on that. Compared to my younger child who is now in Y7 - it is stark. Older child holds back and hasn't thrown themself into much. Younger child is trying lots of different things and exploring life more. From general chatter amongst my friend group (so I appreciate non-scientific) this seems to be the pattern; the Y10 haven't engaged in secondary school / life experience as much. I feel quite sad about it, I suppose. I've tried prompting to go out more etc but ultimately they are of an age now where a lot of those choices are for them to make rather than us be helicopter parents.

I think the 2001-2002 cohort must be up there with who had it worst. They were the first year to have all 9-1 GCSEs with all the difficulty that entailed. Then their A levels were cancelled, there was chaos over grades, people lost their uni places, then teacher grades reinstated with all the accusations of grade inflation. Then their first and second years at uni were severely curtailed or online, but they still had to pay full fees.

I’m sure there will be studies made which will examine the impact.
my 3 were quite ‘lucky’ in that none of them were ok critical years. DS1 was in year 8, DD in year 7 and DS2 in year 4. Did take DD a while longer to make new friends as during covid she reverted back to friends from primary that had gone to other schools.
none of mine were in exam years or leaving school years.

I was also ‘lucky’ to be furloughed so for 6 months I could homeschool them and I tried to do as much as possible - science experiments, cooking, board games etc etc. they also had each other to socialise with too.

I know other families across all ages who weren’t furloughed or had an only child who got no socialisation with peers for months. My sister and BIL are key workers soy niece and nephew continued going to school throughout - however the school wouldn’t do the school work with them as were just providing childcare so I think they did less actual schoolwork then mine did at home.

Yes and it didn't

Every year group seems to think they are the "missing" year group - this nonsense needs to stop so the kids can move on without their grownups banging on about how hard done by they were. It was unprecedented and affected everyone.

@totallybonkerswarning Yes the schools were closed because the poor teachers with the brilliant salary, pensions and 13 weeks holiday downed tools and hid behind the union as per usual

Or to put it another way, we taught online, and for the first time ever were able to concentrate purely on teaching, no data, no extracurricular stuff, no behaviour management, no fighting in class, no bus duty, no crowd control, no bullying in lessons or playground, no canteen chaos, no statement taking, no endless meetings, etc etc etc

So my life was the easiest it has ever been, and the students that engaged got the highest marks ever for any single cohort.....

How interesting. My DC (yr 11+8) frequently comment on the strange and immature behaviour of the current yr 7s. I thought they were exaggerating, maybe not!

No, they are not exaggerating! It seems to be a perfect storm for that cohort - loss of socialisation at a critical time, over compensated by parents and schools, the most unsupervised screen time any children have ever been exposed to, it all seems to come together to leave us with a year group with half the individuals functioning with a level of maturity less than half of their actual age.

Y7, however, are by far the worst year group I've ever had to teach when it comes to focus, manners and social interaction.

DH is a scout leader and has had to deal with the behaviour changes of kids in the y7 to y10 ages. The current y7 are definitely the worst behaved

The good news is those years coming up behind are going to make the current y7 look like angels in a couple of years....

O joy!

I think this is a fair point.

My eldest was doing his finals at Uni in March 2020 - everything shut down at the drop of a hat, he came home to write his final dissertation in his bedroom.
Degree certificate came through the door, and he had a scaled down "Graduation Ceremony" two years later.
He originally had a job offer set up in the US, but this was cancelled.

DC2 was Year 7 in March 2020. Went all on his lonesome from a tiny village school to a massive High School.
He absolutely thrived in lockdown academically - and is reaping the benefits to this day.
That said, socially, he has missed out on naturally gaining independence.
DS was a keen member of the Scouting movement, for eg. He was a Beaver, a Cub, and had just started at Scouts (DH was also a Scout Leader).
When lockdown lifted properly, DS was at the age of Explorers, but he didn't really properly get back into it - and has since left.
He's Y11 now, and academically thriving - I do believe that the lockdown period served him well, and that he benefitted from being able to study at home.

DD was Year 6 in March 2020. She was academically enthusiastic and highly achieving at Primary school.
Lockdown took away a lot of that enthusiasm. She missed her end of year school activity trip, and the end of term play.
She's Y10 now, and never really recovered that level of school enthusiasm - although, it's impossible to know whether this would have happened anyway?

I'll qualify this by saying - both my younger children have been lucky to have access to computers and study spaces. I am very well aware that not all children have been as fortunate.

I’m in Aus so our experience was slightly different but we did have a long lockdown in 2021 between July and November as well as a short one in 2020 but only for 5 weeks and it encompassed school holidays as well.

Our school was very pro active and we had lessons (because they had time to prepare) online.

Anecdotally there is poor behaviour in lots of years but this has been mainly attributed to the increase in screens. I have heard more about school refusal which I had never come across before.

My children were 7 and 9 in 2020 and my oldest loved lockdown as he had a great teacher who gave him loads of projects and things to work on and he loved being free from the slowness of the class. My youngest however, basically attended school for sport, art, music and playing with his friends so he hated it as all the best bits were gone. To compensate, we got him an ipad probably 3-4 years earlier than we otherwise would, purely for him to “socialise”. It was a godsend. He was so much more cheerful after Minecraft sessions online, where he would have friends on speaker. It was a lifesaver at the time, but, with hindsight, once that Pandora’s boxwas opened, it was impossible to close and he is much more into screens than my older child.

I really hope that this isn't going to be a thing for the next ten or so yrs.

My y11 is in a similar boat

Oh it is.

It's down to lack of parenting more than COVID imho. COVID has amplified it, but essentially it's all those kids who cant behave in a restaurant because it's too difficult for parents to parent that's the issue.

It's a generational thing.

Ten years time the fashion will change and we will see strict parenting come back in .

No schools were closed near me.
During the second lockdown in particular at least half the kids were "key worker" kids.
Education did not work but this was not the fault of the teachers, as I am sure you well know.

Oh dear, the detritus keeps flowing.

How can you compare children in boarding schools or homes with lots of other children around them, with children who only had maybe one other sibling or no siblings to play with and develop with?

Many UK children were encouraged to spend long periods of time with Cbeebies, CBBC and their peer contact was over zoom or xbox?

How can you actually compare their experiences?

well, maybe more communal type living is one difference, but certainly not in the Slavakian village I was speaking about, where there were only about 3 children in total, and about 5 years between them all.

I do think one of the main differences was none of these children had screens or phones or internet access

Think it was pretty bad for all school years in very different ways! My current Year 3, missed a regular start to school life but is now struggling with reading and writing due to the phonics foundation being missed. Her teacher says there’s so many of them struggling in her class and it’s the hardest class she’s ever had to teach due to the lack in foundation learning.

yet most other countries start school two years later, and have no issues!?

I think all UK children and young people in college, uni and early career have suffered in one way or another.

Some will get over it and bounce back better than others, which might be an environment or just individual personality things.

It's not natural for any child not to be able to interact with other children, nursery, school local park.
It not natural for new borns only to see their parents and everyone else in masks.

School children need to interact and play together- play is more important than we think. Just like a litter of pups or kittens they play and interact with each other. It would be cruel to keep a puppy isolated and not allowed to see other dogs.

It's not good for young adults at college or work to be stuck in their bedrooms.
Nor for uni students to be confined to tiny flats with lectures online.

And don't forget the ridiculous 'self isolation' rules not allowed to see anyone even family the recommendations that food be put on a tray at a bedroom door, for children as young as 5 or 6.
I was advised to isolate with my 3yo.

Older kids in secondaries seemed to get isolations back to.back.

We have a nice Yr 10 thread running in Secondary section if you would like Op.

Nope I can't agree. Many of my friends have Yr 10 children who have younger and older siblings. None seem to be that affected. Ds2 is very casual about it, missed out on a few things, but he's very blasé about it.

He's out and about, playing football, going to Nando's, Thorpe park with 60 other yr 10 peers on Good Friday, so clearly many are ok and out and about.

And presumably their curriculum is designed for that!