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.

Yes, you're being defensive because you've identified yourself as one of the many who didn't do enough.

It's fine to be busy because you have to work, but it's not fine to not speak to your child, read to them, teach them to share, wait their turn etc. It"s not fine that children are starting school in nappies, and secondary kids are coming through to year Y7 this year not being able to hold a pen. Teenagers have always grunted, but some now never speak in full sentences. Yr10 have no SATS data, so their GCSE targets are pulled out of thin air and are any high, though they don't listen when they're spoken to and can't concentrate for more than two minutes.

This is all because so many were just ignored and left to their own devices - literal devices in many cases. No bedtime, no conversations, no doing anything they didn't want to, and plenty of excuses and lowered expectations.

Those were deranged.

I maintain that the tiers system experiment would never have been inflicted for so long if the areas who got the brunt of it were the ones where powerful people live. It was bleakly funny at the time when everyone just mooched down the road to the next borough over, but it probably wasn't such a laugh for the unfortunate pub owners and the like who missed out on all that clientele.

"OK then... don't, I guess?"

Too much effort I guess.

Like I said a lot of posters didn't really care about kids in difficult circumstances. They didn't make any effort before the pandemic and little effort after.

Cheap point scoring masquerading as genuine concern.

I think for health reasons it was necessary as so many people died including NHS staff looking after them. I don't think anyone realised the damage it would do to children and perhaps governments should be making plans for children in case it happens again. In our family the children missed out on nursery and early education however my sister is a teacher and did work online with her kids and her class. My parents were in my bubble and my Mum looked after mine and they did lots of woodland walks, making play dough etc . She says it was a special time but mine seem fairly adaptable and no issues when nursery returned. Some of my friends children were not as good at mixing after. My sister tells me that lots of children in her school had issues going back, not being where they should be learning wise. It seems more settled now though.
The cost was high to children, old people, families who lost loved ones. I think we were (as a population) unprepared. You would hope governments have learned and would be better planning but somehow I doubt it.

@MotherJessAndKittens

The cost was high to children, old people, families who lost loved ones. I think we were (as a population) unprepared. You would hope governments have learned and would be better planning but somehow I doubt it.

Also the cost was high to the 3 million (a whopping 10% of the workforce) who were excluded from government support, including casual workers, freelancers, etc. Not to mention those who lost their businesses, their homes, and some their lives because of lack of support.

And sadly I agree with you, I doubt the governments and civil servants have learned anything and when we get the next pandemic, it will be a similar fiasco. They'll do different things, but there'll still be lack of cohesive policies, lack of proper support for everyone, and crazy/bonkers rules.

With the repetition of 'I'm all right Jack' from the powerful, who will have learned from partygate to hide it better.

Given that future pandemics are inevitable - might be 5 years, might be 50 years, might be 500 years - what have readers learned to enable them and their families to be more resilient and better prepared for next time?

What needs to be prepared ahead, and what should be done differently, to reduce the potential for harm to children and young people?

This is just confirming narrative against the fact many did overlook harm to dc

It does depend on the severity of the pandemic. If it's like Covid 19, then I wouldn't do anything much different.
My dcs got regular exercise, ate healthy, and had contact with family and friends.
I limited screen time, they read books and signed up to some online projects (so many worthwhile projects were free and lots of places offered free online learning and courses)

If it's a serious pandemic with a much higher risk of death, then you just switch into survival mode and do the best you can.

Each pandemic will have different variables. For Covid-similar I’d do Sweden for others it might need something else

To add Japan also did well, we’re better to look at obesity levels to lower risk

Let's be honest, for a lot of people the mere mention of how badly vulnerable DC were being fucked over was the problem. There was no way to phrase concerns that weren't going to lead to accusations of point scoring from people who found it inconvenient to acknowledge.

Certainly austerity had fucked over a great many kids and families well before covid. It sounds like we're fully in agreement there. That didn't prevent lockdown from making it worse.

Writing an article? School paper?

In the short term, I don't think a lockdown based approach would be possible. Memories are going to have to really fade first.

If I'm being honest, the lesson I learned from this pandemic was to prioritise me and mine. That when you're the designated collateral, you can't opt out of all of it but you might be able to mitigate some of it. While there was nothing I could do about my DC not being able to access schooling, I did have the opportunity to ensure they got socialisation with other kids, and to safeguard my own job and those of relatives by continuing to participate in informal, extended family childcare networks. Those were the right calls. And the second thing was the importance of community networks.

This is exactly what worries me. The precedent has now been set: pandemic = media driven panic = lockdown = frighten the pants off the public = nations competing with each other to inflict the most misery on their people. (Remember "Easter Eggs and tampons are not essential shopping"? "We might have to kill your dogs and cats"?) I wish I could hope that people will see the absurdity of what came before, and not be so compliant next time; but I think the fear machine might work too well again. The way the public keeled over and demanded a more and more oppressive regime frightened me much more than the virus did. The government have discovered that this method of frightening the public works; they even admitted there was much more compliance than they were expecting.

It has been repeated again and again "Boris should have locked down harder and faster", and whoever is in charge next will not want to be another Boris Johnson who failed to do so, so they will lock down at the drop of a hat. My bingo card is ready for the conclusion of the inquiry: "we should have locked down harder, faster, longer, and we will next time". We can only hope that more effort is made to keep the schools open.

I honestly think it'll be the exact opposite of this, for a time at least.

The level of cynicism and mistrust is much higher now. Partygate has done a real number, and also we're now well into the period where we get to see what the costs of lockdown were.

A virus that's dangerous enough to get past this disbelief would have to be so bad that we'd then not be able to rely on the people who keep the lights on and the shelves stacked turning up to work. There'd be a risk of collapse. Not a cheering thought I know!

But does the UK have the necessary levels of trust in government and public compliance with voluntary recommendations? Sweden is a very different culture to the UK, and UK political figures that point to Sweden as an aspirational example are usually from the most selfish UK political parties with the voters least likely to act for the public good.

While I don't know enough about Sweden to have an opinion, worth pointing out that a lot of compliance in the UK was voluntary.

You can't go to what's not open, but there's nowhere near enough police to have stopped most of us from socialising with others outside the rules. The ones who got caught were just unlucky. I know fear of getting caught played some role too, but there were still a lot of us who chose not to do some things we knew we'd be likely to get away with.

I think people who say it was worth it still don't understand the long term repercussions.

Have they spoken with tutors on HE courses, for example, or people who are managing entry level graduates?

Yes but Sweden has a very different population - they made good sensible choices on an individual level rather than needing government to try to force them to be sensible. They are far, far more community minded. In the UK people are completely self absorbed and do exactly what is best for them with no thought for anyone else. For that reason Sweden's approach would probably have very different consequences here - I mean how many people are saying I'd do exactly what i like next time on here?

Personally I think as an island we should have shut the borders/quarantined anyone returning immediately, that was a shambles and far too slow. I do think then we had to protect people as much as we could and that some kind of lockdown was needed to prevent the NHS becoming totally overwhelmed - of course when you centralise everything into large city hospitals to save money, you shoot yourself in the foot in a pandemic. Thankfully vaccinations were developed at incredible speed.

I think we'll discover there was some shameful politics behind decisions not to shut the borders. I'm surprised with all the scandals around the Tory government handling of the pandemic that this hasn't been raised.

I managed with our kids but those children in houses of deprivation were truly thrown under the bus. The pandemic further increased entrenched inequality in our education system and this is going to be hard to address.

It shows how much importance our school system has on the life chances in those from poorer socio economic backgrounds and we should learn that lesson.

All the talk of quarantining travellers is simply nonsense. We import vast amounts of food and essential goods via lorries across The Channel.

Tens of thousands of lorry drivers enter the country every single day.

There is no way that any disease can be kept out of Britain.

Right from the first confirmed cases in the UK, it was clear that we had a new endemic disease that was completely impossible to eradicate. But the UK population, egged on by the press, didn't want to face up to that reality and demanded 'action'.

She took A level exams under the usual exam conditions (everyone in her year across the country did) - you will note I referred specifically to her gaining outstanding A level results. If her GCSEs had been incorrect she wouldn't have got outstanding A level results - would she?

We also aren't an island. Rather, we are made up of the whole of a number of islands, and part of another island. The UK has a land border.