To ask if one year on you feel like your DCs education has recovered form lockdown

[Tokoolforscool]

The first normal school year since lockdown is almost over and I wanted to ask on here how people feel like there DC are doing educationally and socially. I have my eldest in sixth form who’s about to go into her a levels and to be honest I really don’t think she’s academically ready despite previously being a high flyer. My younger DS is in year 9 and I have no concern about him academically (doing perfectly fine there) but socially I notice him and his friends are a LOT younger in terms of maturity and speaking to friends with DC also in year 9 it seems like a lot of them still have a year 6/7 mindset with a lot less resilience and also a lot more dependence on adults that pre lockdown. Do you find that educationally and socially your DC have caught up or are they still behind?

Mine are yr 9 and yr 6.

I like the fact it’s delayed the onset of house parties / older boyfriends / alcohol that began for us in yr 9 😆. she’s got herself a job, doing well at school, organises weekend days out with her friends.

Younger one also doing well at school, I limit how much screen so still into football, again organises his own park meets/ smoothie dates / charity shop trawls at the weekend.

A lot of this is helped by attending the local schools and living in a city and is a MAJOR reason we didn’t fall for the lockdown move idyll. I saw my cousins needing lifts everywhere when we were younger and did not want that for my kids. They have their friendship groups and communities accessible to them so I can step back and let them grow.

DS is year 10 and not struggling too much but I’d say is under performing academically and is emotionally immature. I can’t know if he would have done better if Covid never happened. Hormones might have kicked off a regression anyway.

DD is 7 in Y2; this is the first semi-normal year for her cohort, though there has still been some absences due to Covid.
She did her SATs in May & her teacher said most children weren't going to meet the levels they should/could have done had we not had the disruption caused by Covid. & that the reason the government was pressing ahead with Yr2 SATs was to get a picture of just how badly this cohort has been affected. I believe they aren't planning to publish the results.
We haven't officially had DDs results but she did very well, but could have done better had Covid not happened - according to her teacher. Emotionally, I have nothing to compare it to, but anecdotally I've heard from teacher friends many children seem more immature than previous cohorts.
DS was 2 in 2020 & he definitely seems very immature in comparison with his sister at the same age & not at all ready for school in September, but how much of that is Covid, personality or because he's a boy - don't know.

As a secondary teacher, I have noticed academic and social and emotional effects, especially in the last two sets of Yr 7s. Many of the current ones are two years behind their chronological age: unable to follow instructions, write more than a sentence without prompts, not taking turns in conversation or interrupting/ not waiting their turn. Personally, in terms of the hit to young people’s mental health and resilience, I think this will take years to sort out.

In the older students, particularly A-Level ones, there have been a lot of issues around sitting exams and mocks. We are regularly seeing students having meltdowns or refusing to sit exams because they’re ‘not ready’ or wanting special arrangements whereby their exams are split into several sessions. We can’t invigilate two or three sessions when it should be one and we worry that the first time a student actually has a ‘proper’ exam experience is in the actual A-Level exam.

Exactly this. I don’t think we can blame all of this change on Covid. Resilience in children has be falling for a long time now.

Was at a meeting with DD (aged 7)s teacher last night and she said a lot of them are behind academically and also emotionally, lots of silly behaviour that'd have been dealt with in Year 1 or even Reception but because they had so much time off teachers went easy on them. Teacher said a lot of the primary children are the same because they didn't have the means to keep in touch with friends like Years 7 and above would so they missed out on crucial social years.

DD was already delayed due to SN and she's so far behind academically. Emotionally she seems immature too, lots of silly giggling or just running off randomly.