Kids still feeling the effects of lockdowns…

[sloanedanger]

I just got caught reading a really interesting thread on Twitter started by a teacher:

“Is anyone else thinking we are starting to see the impact of 2 years of disruption and time at home, due to COVID 19, in schools? Extreme behaviours? Some pupils very emotional and struggling to regulate? Low attendance compared to normal? Winter bugs hitting hard?”

A lot of the comments say Y3 is the worst, others saying Years 7 and 8.

My DS is in Year 2 and often struggles with emotions and self regulation at school. It’s made me think, perhaps there’s a reason why linked to the pandemic. Lockdown was hard, DP and I were home with very young DC, trying to work, poor mental health, emotions high. Very little patience.

@trumpet50

It doesn't matter what people on this thread say. The evidence is on MN that discussions were had regarding lockdowns and schools shutting so obviously people weren't silenced or squashed on either said. If they were there would have been no discussions.

said side

I disagree that it was the majority, but there is research emerging that shows that the mental health of a significant minority of young people, particularly secondary age, improved during lockdowns. But many, particularly as pps have pointed out in overcrowded housing or with abusive family members, suffered hugely, and younger children particularly so with socialisation and language development.
I agree that the pressure to 'catch up' on return was a big problem... but the unrelenting focus on attainment data over all else has been going on in schools for many years, so not surprising. I worry that we are blowing our chance to learn real lessons from this.

Also worry about the rewriting history on here. School closures were necessary, but went on too long. If we have another pandemic with similar r and death rates to the early stages of this one (remember bodies lining corridors awaiting ventilators in northern italy) locking down asap and then releasing once we know more is still going to be the best way forward. But this time there'll be all these layers of ignorance to deal with.

Completely agree with this- it's what happens when a whole country doesn't trust teachers.
Makes a mockery of comparisons of learning loss with Sweden too... or any other country where teachers are trusted to teach the children in front of them what they need.

Also worry about the rewriting history on here. School closures were necessary, but went on too long. If we have another pandemic with similar r and death rates to the early stages of this one (remember bodies lining corridors awaiting ventilators in northern italy) locking down asap and then releasing once we know more is still going to be the best way forward. But this time there'll be all these layers of ignorance to deal with.

I agree. We needed to close schools but there should have been quicker lock downs and more priority to schools reopening rather than everything else.

Do you not remember how sharply the deaths dropped in January 2021?

They may have happened but attempts to shut voices down was a constant.

Many have said they avoided posting due to aggression. Probably the right tack but at times it felt too important to be silenced over.

Yes, and prioritising the measures to make that happen more safely, as noblegiraffe was constantly calling for on here. We've just spunked £30bn as a country on the gambling whims of a couple of eejits. Imagine the good that could have done for better ventilation in schools.

Also worry about the rewriting history on here. School closures were necessary, but went on too long. If we have another pandemic with similar r and death rates to the early stages of this one (remember bodies lining corridors awaiting ventilators in northern italy) locking down asap and then releasing once we know more is still going to be the best way forward

Your first paragraph was bang on napody, but this is speculative. We don't know nearly enough yet to ascertain whether lockdown as we had was the least worst course of action, and any future pandemic response will also need to take into account public attitudes and responses (which is how we ended up with a lockdown in the UK really, the government didn't want to initially).

Because in order for a lockdown to be possible and for any of the potential benefits to be reaped, you also need a lot of other factors in play: the desire and ability to fund it, a population who'll comply in high enough numbers to reduce contacts, and enough people who are willing to work outside the home in the jobs that are necessary to keep both society and lockdown functioning. That is, not just things like NHS, carers and food distribution but also those who delivered the sevrices that kept the population pacified. Amazon warehouse staff, Deliveroo drivers, takeaways etc.

We did have those in place in 2020-21 but whether that would still be the case in a future pandemic that looks like this one we just don't know. It obviously wouldn't be the case in the near to medium term, but in say 2048 or whatever that's harder to call.

"Many have said they avoided posting due to aggression."

Certainly true. The aggression and rage directed at any teachers who dared to post on here at that time was appalling. The number of people who told them to "resign if you don't like it" was sickening. And here we are, two years on and hundreds of schools have been hit with a worrying recruitment crisis with so many teachers (and TAs) doing exactly that: resigning.

Well, some pandemics are stopped that way. SARS for example: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636331/
In early 2020, nobody (and definitely not the 'stopped clock' civid deniers) knew exactly what we were dealing with.
Then when zero covid became impossible the idea was to suppress it long enough to develop vaccines. Which happened, in record time. Honestly I wonder if some people have no accurate memories of any of it?!

The point being that the conditions allowing that for SARS weren't in place by the time ordinary people knew enough about covid to be having those discussions. There was someone on here the other week claiming that we could've had a 2 to 3 month global lockdown to eradicate covid entirely. That's an extreme position to take in November 2022, but people telling others we're never going to get rid of covid if you don't do X was still a common enough refrain on here in 2021.

Well no I don’t think threads were bereft of that profession. People didn’t post due to that aggression - and have said below.

I completely agree with all the ifs and buts - and that's what I meant about the 'layers of ignorance to deal with': I.e. compliance will certainly be much lower.

However, the nature of exponential growth means that early action outweighs everything else. Even if it was an automatically triggered 48 hour lockdown with a certain r/death rate (meaning transmissibility value and death rate, not a very dark sub-reddit!) Then a RAPID assessment and releasing as much as possible. But for this to have any chance you'd need education now, not to expect people to get their heads around it when it happens.

Good point. I think thay delay between scientists warning everyone and the public getting their heads round it was the big problem (and China's lack of transparency at those very early stages). So I think ordinary people need to understand more about it in advance- most people hadn't even heard the word pandemic before covid hit.

I think I might have played a big part of derailing here, sorry. But it saddens me that what should be a focus on healing the damage caused to children has become as opportunity for anti lockdown inaccurate 'I told you so'. The pandemic caused the damage, discussions on how it should have been handled are very important but if we had taken the time to reflect on how to best transition back to school for children, I really don't think many would be suffering nearly so much.

Well, it might not be lower. Or maybe it'll be the same but even more work can be done remotely by the next time, so contacts get reduced that way and it balances out optional noncompliance, for want of a better term. If we do actually investigate properly whether lockdown was the least worst option when factoring in all the harms it also wrought, that might be a more persuasive case than some of the apologism people are attempting now. It's just very hard to call, especially as some of the things we'll need to try and answer haven't happened yet iyswim.

But given the disproportionate likelihood that any future pandemic will come from China, and given the way in which they behaved at the outset, I'm not confident the rest of the world would find out soon enough for really effective early action to be possible.

As my first post on this thread pointed out, we are a long way after the last school closure and yet nothing has been done to support children in pandemic recovery in that time. The £15bn package for comprehensive support in all areas of child development was rejected, the tutoring programme was a dismal failure due to government incompetence and rather than support pouring into schools they are in a worse state than ever.

We can talk about the failures during the pandemic to re-open schools sooner, e.g. in June 2020 the major reason any non-keyworker kids went back to school at all was because they wanted their parents to go back to work. That meant prioritising full time for a small number of year groups, and some children had full time(ish) school from June while others had nothing (my DS was back, my DD wasn't, and that was very difficult to manage at home). It also meant that NO consideration was given to secondary, because parents can go to work and leave secondary kids at home anyway. So secondaries didn't open at all, bar a ludicrous couple of days for Y10 and Y12. Rotas were planned for, but dismissed by the government at the last minute.

But what also needs looking at is the failures after schools re-opened to support children with catching up emotionally and physically as well as educationally. Schools have basically been expected to not just truck on as normal, but at a hyper-speed, not only expected to teach e.g. Y9 the Y9 content, but also any Y8 content that was missed, at the same time. Schools also were dropped into chaos after chaos - in secondary this was was testing centres, vaccine centres, taking on the role of exam boards (and the massive job of dealing with parental objections to all of the above). As I said in my first post, this post-school closure period, far from being one of catching-up, is also something that needs catching up from.

What could have been done differently in the last two years that might mean that we're not still seeing children with emotional issues, educational gaps, physical issues (e.g. obesity)? That £15bn package for a start.

What could be implemented from now? Obviously it would need money, and people who are willing to look forwards and not merely backwards.

We need to do both. We need to start by identifying and naming all the harms, and there's still plenty of resistance to that so it's an ongoing project. Then we need to work out how best we can address them now, ie looking forward, but also exactly what was done wrong throughout the course of the pandemic so we don't make those mistakes again, ie looking backwards. It's all important.

It is all important. But these children are growing up fast and it's urgent - we need to sort things out for them first, and fast. So depressing to think how much good that 15bn could have already done... when (as I need to keep mentioning) government incompetence just cost us 30bn in a couple of weeks.

Then weigh up all the pandemic handling side and communicate findings properly. SirMingeALot you're probably right about the issues that and very pragmatic- I just see the discourse crystallising into 'lockdowns are NEVER the answer' and that worries me.

There was plenty of aggression on both sides. The CEV (many of whom still are btw) probably had to deal with the most.

But what also needs looking at is the failures after schools re-opened to support children with catching up emotionally and physically as well as educationally. Schools have basically been expected to not just truck on as normal, but at a hyper-speed, not only expected to teach e.g. Y9 the Y9 content, but also any Y8 content that was missed, at the same time. Schools also were dropped into chaos after chaos - in secondary this was was testing centres, vaccine centres, taking on the role of exam boards (and the massive job of dealing with parental objections to all of the above). As I said in my first post, this post-school closure period, far from being one of catching-up, is also something that needs catching up from.
Completely agree with this. Although I do know some (primary) schools who were brave enough to prioritise wellbeing, they were taking big risks to do so in a completely results-driven climate.

We need to start by identifying and naming all the harms

Ok:

1. Increase in pupils with special educational needs, e.g. speech and language
   Possible solution: Increased funding for SEN support in schools, training up more S&L therapists. Toolkits for parents to support.

2. Backlog of pupils with SEN who need a diagnosis/EHCP
   Possible solutions: Increased funding for SEN support to schools, including funding for SENCo assistants to deal with additional paperwork, meetings etc. Increased funding for Ed Psychs, paediatricians etc to speed up the diagnosis pathways (I understand that there is a severe restriction on the number of Ed Psychs who can be trained which needs looking at urgently in the current situation). Huge funding initiative to recruit and retain qualified TAs for all classes.

3. Social skills
   Possible solutions: slimming down the curriculum in primary to give lots of time for social skill education, school trips, residentials, forest schools etc

4. Physical skills
   Possible solutions: slimming down the curriculum in primary to give more time to PE. Outside providers to support and extend to extra curricular.

Obviously we would need a massively increased workforce in schools. Smaller class sizes would help too.

That's just off the top of my head, and focused on primary.

So you really think being deprived of peer socialisation at critical moments of development would have no impact on children and young people? And you think the only possible reason children and young people would have become anxious is due to parental transmission? Not the overturning of fundamental aspects of life (which were presumable sufficient in themselves to induce anxiety in these adults you are castigating)?

And all this presumes more than one adult in the home and that said adults were not working.

Shame on you for invalidating all the testimonies on here.