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.

130k missing children? When you say no one knows where they are, do you mean as in because they could be home schooled or left the country, or do you mean missing as in they could be dead for all anyone knows?

On paper, my DS (Y3 at the start) should have suffered academically. Dyslexia had recently been suspected.

In reality he thrived. He worked 1-1 daily online with his TA, who had recently undertaken a diploma in dyslexia. He discovered a love of books, initially on Audible and then reading books that interested him. Working on a computer helped him more than writing stuff down. He got to indulge his artistic side in ways that were not constrained to the syllabus.

(Incidentally, he is now in secondary school and his teachers were surprised at the suggestion of dyslexia and say they have no reason to think he may be dyslexic.)

DD, Y7 at the start, had been at her new secondary school just long enough to forge some solid new friendships when lockdown happened, so maintained those via WhatsApp. She has just started 6th form college and doesn't seem to have suffered any negative impacts as a result of lockdown especially.

I guess it is down to the individual child, just as it is with adults - I have friends at work that really struggled with lockdown (some of them are still noticeably affected now, their mental health took a real battering), whereas my line manager commented at my appraisal back then that I had thrived and launched myself at the challenge.

Are you serious.

Kids need to learn how to be in groups. Not online.

Are you seriously harking back to the time before schools?

My friend works as safeguarding for a school and lots of children just disappeared back to their families countries. Whether they returned to school there or not I don’t know.

I am really happy that some children enjoyed lockdown and weren't affected. I can assure you that many were affected negatively.

da vinci, plato, aristotle, etc being in groups (risks of bullying etc) personally the schooling system has a lot to answer for

It was utterly unbearable on here. Made worse by all of the teachers ( with a few exceptions that actually cared about children ) with plenty of time on their hands telling us they were pushing to keep the schools closed, even as they flew on holiday to sunny countries!!! The optics were just awful.

The arguments on here were just insane and god only knows how the mods coped. It was very sad for the children who suffered the most.

I remember my kids school teacher sending a photo of her on holiday to the Teams chat.

All of the above. School refusers, home schooled, emigrated, sick, carers, working, homeless, dead - they don't know where all of them are. There aren't the resources to keep track of them and get them back to school.

OK.

Plato and Aristotle you say?

backs away slowly

It doesn't make me wonder.

"Just under 227,000 people died in the UK with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificate."

Do you think that number would be the same if we hadn't locked down?

We have a vaccine now. We have more knowledge.

what didnt help was there were cases where covid was being used as the reason even if it was not the cause

Yes several of ours said it was not safe to open - along with the union support - were busy holidaying on another continent. I will never forgive the NEU they literally have blood on their hands.

Wow. Its very concerning some could be dead and no one knows!

The difference between 'died of' and 'died with'. Agreed.
But that's a different issue to wondering why we locked down.

Yep, that's not how it works. We can't just switch these things on and off as convenient. It would make life easier if we could, but we interfered with what was actually a more fragile social contract on school attendance than a lot of people seem to have realised. There's no reset button.

Most are probably not dead of course, but they're not at school anymore. The number has doubled since 2019.

The benefits of lockdown?...what benefits? There were none.

You don't believe in schools??

Wonder where my child has been all day then🤔

This. I think lockdowns and school closures broke the idea that you must go to school, no matter what. This has never recovered.

In many countries, schools are continuously closed during the summer for longer than they were during the British lockdowns. Schools here were closed for most pupils only for a few months, once in spring 2020 and once at the beginning of 2021.

I'm sorry but I don't really believe it that everyone's kids became desocialised and regressed in their learning so much during such a short amount of time simply from not being in a collective learning environment for a few months. There must be other causes.

Could it be that the rampant Covid infections themselves that children are being subjected to since they've returned to school, are affecting their health, including mentally/intellectually? There were some recent studies that show Covid infections can cause brain shrinkage and other forms of brain damage.

Could it be that the trauma of a global pandemic was, well, traumatising in general, and that the current attitude of not addressing said trauma and pretending it never happened is harming young people?

Or: could it also be that UK school itself is a harmful environment, overly crowded, conformist and abusive, and once the children had a brief escape from it, they realised how bad it really was, and didn't want to return?

No, it can't be, right? Business as usual is great, it must be the lockdowns.

Hmmm. Easy to say they were not worth it but a family member was a senior doctor and in Jan 2021 he admitted his hospital was very very close to the edge. Paediatric wards meant for 3 children had 8 adults in them they were near 100% capacity. He is not one for drama but it got worryingly bad for a while. So in that context the choices made were understandable.

Very true. And again this is not said with the benefit of hindsight I said it at the time.

We created artificially high peaks and also dragged the whole thing on with multiple lockdowns. At huge cost.

Presumably in other countries when schools are closed those children are socialising with other children?

I can believe that huge amounts are missing from school. I could name 10 teenagers who are no longer in school and even more who now go to those behavioural schools.

They were such a young age going into lockdown and came out turning those important transition years.

Those who say no are incredibly lucky to not know anyone who has suffered.