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.

Teacher here…
All SEND children were allowed into school. All children of Key workers allowed into school. I would also like to add that most schools also allowed children back in if parents contacted to say that their child was suffering poor mental health. I taught a Year 4 bubble and had 19 children out of a possible 30 in it.

Figures show that the decrease in attendance is primarily due to more frequent sickness. You can see it right now with the latest variant. Multiple classes with 5 or 6 kids off sick at the same time.

Well no, they show that's what people are saying when their DC don't go in. Not the same thing at all. Obviously nobody on MN would ever pretend their kid had the trots when they're actually taking them on holiday a couple of days before half term, having a duvet day, going on a quieter day out during the week etc. But it's very much a thing!

It was in a Sunday times investigation

It wasn’t though. My oh’s chemotherapy was stopped during the first week of lockdown and didn’t start again until August, then suspended again in the October lockdown. That’s life saving chemo!

Where in the UK are you?

I'm in England, and all SEND kids were most certainly not allowed into school. Had to have an EHCP here. My SEND child got no schooling at all between 20th March 2020 and November, then again in the 2021 lockdown.

Also are there any stats for most schools letting kids back if parents disclosed poor mental health?

How would you like your children - alive or dead? Or indeed orphaned, if children were more likely to survive covid than their parents & grandparents.

It was shit, but it had to be done. I do wish people would stop blaming covid lockdowns for damaging children's mental health. We weren't at war, were we? There were no bombs falling on our heads or people shooting at us.

FFS think about how other people in the world are suffering right now, and compare what those children are going through with being stuck at home in front of the telly for 6 months.

Thats called survivor bias, just because you were fine doesn't mean others were. A previous very healthy friend of mine nearly died 3 times in itu, with her children saying bye to her via an iPad on facetime. For every 'well we were fine' story there will be 'I lost my Dad/husband/sister,grandma' story

And no one says they have it now as it's hard to get the tests to check.

It was shit, but it had to be done. I do wish people would stop blaming covid lockdowns for damaging children's mental health. We weren't at war, were we? There were no bombs falling on our heads or people shooting at us.

FFS think about how other people in the world are suffering right now, and compare what those children are going through with being stuck at home in front of the telly for 6 months.

What a stupid post.

I feel like younger people were the ones who had to give up the most and are still often judged by older generations.

Wow, we got 9 pages in before someone decided to try and co-opt the suffering of children in war. That's better than usual!

It’s ridiculous, of course a pandemic & lockdown can impact mental health. I mean it’s impacted adults as well.

What I never understood was the people who shouted how they didn't agree with shielding only for the vulnerable and the rest of the population functioning normally as safely could be managed. Some posters on here had the view of 'if I have to shield, everyone else should have to too'...

Yes, my DD fell behind a lot, but recovered enough to get 11 x 9 GCSE’s this summer

"Well no, they show that's what people are saying when their DC don't go in. Not the same thing at all. Obviously nobody on MN would ever pretend their kid had the trots when they're actually taking them on holiday a couple of days before half term,"

I'm sorry but you don't know what you are talking about. We all know kids go sick the last week of term and trust me all, most of the time their mates comment on where they have gone because they are all on social media.

It's not like attendance is at pre pandemic levels most of the term then dives near holidays because no one cares anymore about lying to take their kids out of school.

There an element of that but kids and staff are genuinely ill more often.

The ICU where I was working was one hour from collapse at one point. We also came close to running out of oxygen three times.
"Luckily" some patients died so that freed up the beds.

I still have nurses and doctors jn my team who have nightmares about the first wave. We should have shut down quicker - both times. But if we hadn't shut down at all then the deaths would have been astronomical.

So forgive me if I don't feel sorry for children who were safe at home with their parents.

Only if the school actually let them in.

Ours didn't even acknowledge that we were facing a second round of autistic (with other SpLDs) child being unable to cope with "home learning" when I asked for him to have a place.

They also ignored that my other child was depressed, unable to engage with online lessons and just sobbed on my lap daily taunted by half the class being visible on screen, and the other half tauntingly being audible playing on the school fields from our garden. It took another 2 years of pushing to finally get his SpLD diagnosed even though his brother has it too. "Covid delays" meant the school didn't look too hard at why he was struggling so much and couldn't engage.

It took 3 years to catch up and he's a lucky one with engaged parents who can recognise issues, afford to go private and pay for extra tuition.
How many did slip through the net? Let alone the ones tangled up in delays and missed early interventions.

It did somewhat sour my relationship with that school long term. I previously did a lot of volunteering for them. Not that they allowed parents into the building for 2 years afterwards!

The official stats will record it as sickness absence though, not whether the receptionist knows full well they've gone on holiday. I know these are challenged on occasion with more frequent offenders, but I can assure you there are plenty of us who get away with it.

Which isn't to say there's been no increase in genuine sickness absence either, but it's just plain fact that there's a difference between recorded sickness absences and actual sickness absences.

Indeed they were

They flew in the face of everything we had learned by trying them before, at least twice, with abject failure.

Had we not had lockdowns, but people advised to keep contact with the vulnerable minimal and stay at home when ill the outcome would have been the same on the disease front.

From day one it was abundantly clear that everyone would get the virus at some stage, it was also pretty well established that when animal (zoonotic) virus' make the jump to the human population they are initial rather nasty but generally evolve to their host, as their host evolves to respond, and particularly suscepatable hosts are killed off and therefore successive waves of infection are less severe, that's been seen in almost every outbreak of respiratory virus in history, and what happened.

The March lockdown didn't do as much harm as the later ones.

Being stuck at home with the telly and i Pads doesn't seem to have greatly benefited the development of the current cohorts in infant schools...

More kids are off sick, but it isn't proportionate with overall increased absences.

It's an impossible question to accurately answer as there was a lockdown.

So we know what the cost has been in terms of mental health, Government debt impacting the education budget (remember the Education Tsar resigning because the Government failed to increase the education budget by the £10 billion required), increased persistent absence, reduction in physical activity, emotional damage from children stuck in dysfunctional homes etc etc .

What we don't know is what the Covid death toll would have been without the school closures (because there were school closures).

My personal opinion (and it is just an opinion) is that the cost to children unfairly and way outweighed the benefit to wider society. Especially when you consider that more children died from RSV (for which there is a vaccine) than died from COVID.

I'm a key worker so my dds went in every day, it really helped dd2 who is a summer baby catch up and build confidence

Which isn't to say there's been no increase in genuine sickness absence either, but it's just plain fact that there's a difference between recorded sickness absences and actual sickness absences.

so what you are saying is that the attendance crises is due to parental dishonesty increasing because they don't value their children's education anymore so is not really due to lockdown. Right you are then😂

absolutely not

No. Pubs reopened before schools ffs!

Our son has now been diagnosed adhd/autistic but at the time we didn't know or even suspect. We had an awful time at home, I did ask if he could have a school place but fair enough they said no and just gave me advice for how to manage at home. I thought I was just a terrible parent.

I feel we are still traumatised by the whole thing tbh, I know that sounds dramatic but I do.