There will be so many illiterate kids after Covid.

[Elephant4]

If we lockdown again - and even if we don't.

So many kids are getting little to no education. It's been almost a year now and looks like it could last another one.

I'm not talking about my kids. I look after them and educate them after school and during lockdowns etc as best I can.

But there's so many kids round here who have little to no parental support. We live in a deprived area with high Covid rates. Barely any of the kids had any education during lockdown. In the last term bubbles, year groups, classes have been sent home constantly. Schools have been shut due to teacher shortages. When the kids are at school they're not being taught due to supply teachers - behaviour being awful - much worse than before.

The kids at Secondary level here were already underachieving. This pandemic's school closures etc will leave thousands all over the country illiterate - or otherwise very close to it - I reckon.

I think that it will widen the gap between kids with and without support certainly. I have no idea whats going on in other peoples homes but we will just do what we did last time and muddle thru. I suspect the majority will do their best by their kids

Given the state of SPAG on sites like this, I’m not sure that wasn’t inevitable. School can’t buck the tide of the home environment, and if parents genuinely think any of the below are correct they’re already swimming uphill through treacle (all seen on here today). And that’s before you get to a C grade GCSE apparently “not being a guarantee of literacy or numeracy”.

Thier
Could of
Should of
My kid’s love toy’s
Activitys
Chester draws
Wallah (voila)

In a educational career lasting from age 5 to 18, with 2 terms in school missed (but work was set and marked), you think illiteracy is the outcome?

You'll get so many people talking about how their precious darlings will be fine and anyone who truly loves their kids will be able to homeschool effectively.

But YADNBU.

@Isthatitnow

In a educational career lasting from age 5 to 18, with 2 terms in school missed (but work was set and marked), you think illiteracy is the outcome?

I read news reports that children went back into nappies during lockdown so lets not pretend that all children aged 5 will know their ABCs.

Schools have been given money specifically to help these children catch up and keep up. Schools can use this how they choose, and I know that the teachers will find imaginative ways to use this to help the children, both during any lockdown that might happen and when schools return to normality.

I have been so impressed by the way our local school has risen to this challenge.

FFS. If they are aged5, there is plenty of time to work it out? Perhaps as a parent do some additional reading with your child?

If you think that teachers are so shit, we can’t get your child to literacy between the age of 5 and 18, you really need to be homeschooling.

Yep I will probably be slated but my children have autism and I wasn’t able to do any homeschooling at all. They refused and it was a battle trying to get them to do it. Also the school didn’t send any work no matter how much I chased it up, my daughter has a 1:1 and her worked is catered specifically for her so I guess they didn’t want to go to the effort of having to send work specifically for her, they gave her a login and password that didn’t even work on the home learning site so yes I am concerned about no school.

There won’t be any jobs left for them. Mass automation and offshoring is looming. Who needs an education?

@Isthatitnow

In a educational career lasting from age 5 to 18, with 2 terms in school missed (but work was set and marked), you think illiteracy is the outcome?

One in five children left primary school in 2018 unable to read or write properly. So yes, I think the OP is right to be concerned.

Your title sounds hyperbolic OP, and you’ll probably get loads of people insisting that children are ‘resilient’ and will ‘bounce back’ from this experience - but actually I don’t think your assessment is that far off.

Covid restrictions and school closures will massively widen the already deeply entrenched inequality in our society. This will affect all young people from babies (lack of access to health visitors; poor socialisation; no baby classes) to students graduating into what will likely be the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Anyone calling for school closures and insisting that online learning is anywhere near as effective as in-person teaching is deluding themselves. I used to teach Year 1 kids in a fairly leafy, middle-class school - at least a third of the parents there were unable to fully comprehend the curriculum their 5-year-olds were covering, let alone deliver it themselves. All these super keen Mumsnet homeschoolers seem to assume that all mothers have at least an undergraduate degree and unlimited access to tech, and work part-time at the most; in reality a lot of kids will be spending most of their lockdown time stuck in their rooms playing Roblox and learning next to nothing. And this will be magnified hugely in areas of high deprivation like the one you describe, where the parents don’t have the education or the resources or the tech or even the inclination to support their children’s learning at home. Loads of kids will inevitably fall through the cracks.

Agree. I personally would like to see everything but maths English and science dumped from.per GCSE curriculum for a short time.

If schools close again I will not follow what is set for my year 1 dd. I will look at maths and English only. Then if they do close for more than a few months I will move her to private at some point. She is my youngest so it's a option as I wouldnt be paying full fees. She is a summer born in year 1 but should be in year two. She cant read or write and should be in juniors come September.

Also I have no clue what she is doing in school anymore.

I teach KS1 in a deprived area. A lot of them didn't do much over lockdown and we had a disrupted term in the Autumn. Even so, the kids made a lot of progress during that term. We did have to do a focus on reading/writing and maths but they did well and they weren't particularly further behind my previous class by the same point last year.

However, we haven't seen anything of the promised tutors for catch-up.

What a shame the Tories shut all the children’s centres-they would have been a marvellous resource to support anyone struggling with parenting.

There will be a huge gap in abilities between the kids whose parents have encouraged and helped them to continue learning during this, and the ones whose parents were either unable or unwilling to. Yanbu.

Kids are leaving school illiterate already. You should see some of the job applications I've read recently. 90% of them went straight in the shredder. My grammar isn't perfect but I have honestly seen some that I had to double check the dates on their GSCEs because I couldn't believe they'd left school like this. Not just grammar, their spelling too.

I think it's where they don't read. Children don't read anywhere near as much as they used to and when typing they rely on autocorrect. Add to that the attitude of some parents that spelling doesn't matter and teaching their children is the schools job and the poor little sods are doomed.

I hate it when people go "oh, it doesn't matter as long as you can understand what they mean." It does matter and it makes them less employable.

We're readvertising rather than interview some of the people who have applied. Its a sales position so not a role that requires a lot of documenting but even we require basic literacy. Employers are not going to waste time calling someone in for an interview when they only thing they spelt right on the application was their own name.

YABU!
A lot of countries don't even start formal education until 6, UK kids have an extra 2 years to catch up. 2 terms really shouldn't make a difference.

@Redlocks28

What a shame the Tories shut all the children’s centres-they would have been a marvellous resource to support anyone struggling with parenting.

Because obviously they would be open in a pandemic that has closed schools!

@LegoAndLolDolls

Agree. I personally would like to see everything but maths English and science dumped from.per GCSE curriculum for a short time.

If schools close again I will not follow what is set for my year 1 dd. I will look at maths and English only. Then if they do close for more than a few months I will move her to private at some point. She is my youngest so it's a option as I wouldnt be paying full fees. She is a summer born in year 1 but should be in year two. She cant read or write and should be in juniors come September.

Also I have no clue what she is doing in school anymore.

That sounds awful. I agree that Maths and English are important but those other subjects are needed. Much needed.

Giving another view, my 10 year old nephew has become an avid reader during the first lockdown. He can't take his head out of a book now. Both of his parents worked and he isn't from a privileged background. He was home alone with his older sister and not allowed screen time until evening. He wasn't like that before. I wonder if other children discovered a love of books.

In a educational career lasting from age 5 to 18, with 2 terms in school missed (but work was set and marked), you think illiteracy is the outcome

Essentially yes. The original lockdown has already been found to have led to significant regressions, not just in educational terms but also socially and developmentally.

One of the many articles on the subject:
www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/10/children-regressing-and-struggling-mentally-in-lockdown-says-ofsted

I read news reports that children went back into nappies during lockdown so lets not pretend that all children aged 5 will know their ABCs.

Yes. Which is why I find the psychological impact much more concerning tbh.

Decreased ocial contact with similarly aged children, less opportunities for mental stimulation and an increased likelihood of parents dealing with loss / decrease of earnings and the MH effect corona has had on them...

1/5 of children are functionally illiterate when they start secondary school.

Children from poor socio-economic backgrounds are 18months behind their richer peers when they take their GCSEs.

Not sure the world will start to care when this gets worse

Lots were illiterate and lacking basic skills, including communication before COVID-19. Kids are not being read to, they don’t hear stories being said or nursery rhymes being sung as much as before. Schools can only do so much.

If MN is any barometer for public mood you'll be told that SPAG doesn't matter and anyone who thinks it does is uptight and old fashioned.