Did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the harm to children’s education?

[PoisedKhakiUser]

AIBU to ask whether the benefits of lockdown - saving lives and protecting health - outweighed the damage it did to children’s education and future life chances? I feel like kids lost out on so much during this time, and I wonder if the cost was too high.

Yep

He may not have had to 'shield' but he still like all of us had to follow ridiculous lock down laws?

Even if schools had remained open... would parents have sent them? People were scared in March 2020. Mumsnet was a fear factory. People complaining that schools hadn't shut quick enough.

That passed. Remember the lockdown where people scrambled to be a key worker to get in?

Hardly anyone wanted their dc at home, they knew the damage

@DoreenonTill8 yes of course but I'm replying to saying the most vulnerable were the elderly
When the most vulnerable were the ones that were offered the 3rd primary vaccine

He was able to go out and about much earlier than me when I was at home alone for the best part of 6 months

No, schools should never have closed.

Children were sacrificed for the old and infirm.

Do any politicians know this? Have any of them actually said “lockdowns were an utter failure” out loud? Johnson probably thought it, but his handlers wouldn’t allow him to say it. Most of them are sticking to the script of “we had to do it”.

I will just about concede there was some necessity to a first lockdown, but because the government terrified the public into believing the threat was far worse than it really was, it was politically impossible to end restrictions.

Completely agree with you. Sweden kept their schools open the whole time with no negative consequences. Lockdowns were a completely bizarre concept considering who was actually vulnerable to COVID. Why we ever thought copying communist China was a good idea I will never know.

https://www.homeinstead.co.uk/care-home-or-home-care-a-comparison-of-elderly-care-options/

The average life expectancy for people in care homes is 12-30 months. Chances are almost every care home resident in March 2020 are no longer alive.

The first lockdown went on far too long for schools. I remember near the start there was talk of them reopening in May but that never happened. Pubs and theme parks etc opened in July but schools stayed closed. Not even an hour or two on the school field for my kids.

@TickingAlongNicely

I think one of the biggest problems was that those with health anxiety suddenly had official validation and were screaming granny killer at anybody that tried to put things in perspective.

The government's psy-ops campaign didn't help matters, either.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/state-fear-ministers-used-covert-tactics-keep-scared-public/

I remember that there were talks about be everyone over the age of retirement should be shielding. That would have done my parents’ heads in. Plus mine as well as working in essential retail, buying their shopping etc.

It’s these u-turns that make it look as if lockdown was an “exercise”, or an “experiment”. The way we went from “it’s nothing to worry about” to “you must stay at home” at the flick of a switch. If it hadn’t been for partygate, Mumsnet and others might be baying for mask mandates in schools and everywhere through the winter even now.

I had my bingo card all ready for the government saying “we tried to open the schools in June 2020, but the unions and the public yelled at us to keep them closed”. Again, I think this is because the government deliberately terrified the public. Their strategy of frightening people into accepting lockdown worked too well.

Pretty sure the DfE looked into that.Not that it was widely publicised because this was mainly used by the Tories as part of the culture wars. Most of that persistent absence is illness. Mainly Covid/long covid.

Which is utterly unsurprising when we are in the middle of a pandemic.

I count our family as lucky as ds was 9 so it wasn't a crucial point and we moved school in year 5 and his new school was amazing during the lockdowns with actual teaching over Google meet - at the start of the day, lunch time and the end of the day. Ds actually went back improved at maths as I was wfh and able to help teach him. Having online games also helped. We were also fortunate that we both wfh and only have one child so overall the impact has not been awful, infact it has been better for me career wise as it decentralised from London and brought in hybrid working.

Could you link to the DfE showing this?

Sorry online games helped socially as he was still able to play and speak to friends.

This is true, but if you said this at the time there were howls of outrage.

It's not possible.
The poster made up the bit about nobody knowing where they are.

No. The so called benefits of lockdown are far outweighed by the harm that was done in all sorts of areas, education being only one of them. The harm is so bad that we actually don’t know what we have done and we will be dealing with the consequences of lockdown for the rest of our lives.

Lives outweigh education, in my eyes.

My DS was out of school between year 2-3 and apart from missing KS1 SATs I can't say it affected his schooling in the slightest.

His class did well in KS2 SATs etc.

Why then would I have wanted to take more risks with the lives of the sick and elderly?

For how long will we be "in the middle of a pandemic"?
Half of overall absences are due to illness. If you have data that shows covid is the cause of most persistent absence I would be interested to see that data.

How do we not know the harms to education when SATs, GCSEs and A Levels etc are all running?

Bushmills has a point. I haven’t been vaccinated. Worked in a school, during the 2021 lockdown I elected to go into school rather than stay at home. I had Covid once. Friends who were vaccinated repeatedly, have had it repeatedly. How does that work?