What is the impact on children of the months of school closures in your view?

[MTBer2021]

It seems there's a huge range of views on this and partly depends on how much your child's school is offering and whether or not there's an adult at home to spend time supervising home learning etc.

I am surprised that some well educated parents I know are so relaxed about the impact on their young children of months of school closures. People whose child would ordinarily never miss a day of school other than due to genuine illness (no term time holidays etc) but who seem very relaxed about how the current situation won't mean their children fall behind at all.

There are some people endlessly saying that children are so resilient and how in other countries they don't even start school until age 6 or 7 so there's nothing to worry about..... and there are also those who are desperate to get kids back maybe before it's even safe and teachers who worry about kids who are doing little to no home learning for various reasons.

There are ways to manage home learning for some and I know some kids are happier at home than at school but is it really a popular and informed opinion that the current situation will have no lasting impact on kids and can all be easily remedied when schools open (whenever that is) and with no specific catch up programme?

I haven’t looked at ONS but this was on graph thread

PHS have done a more thorough job on occupational risk especially re infection :

publichealthscotland.scot/downloads/report-of-record-linkage-study-of-covid-19-among-teachers-healthcare-workers-and-other-working-age-adults

The PHS survey found teachers were more likely to be infected but then less likely based on the infections to be hospitalised

@FanciedanewnameAnne

Teachers shown to be at no greater risk of catching SARS-CoV-2 than the general population. I saw this on the BBC news today too. It seems that manual workers/factory/taxi drivers and chefs are high risk along with as suspected NHS frontline and care workers.

Oh right will have to have a look

The children need school when it comes down to it. They do. While we're having a few wins in terms of my kids finally swigging stuff because they're getting one to one, there's more cases of us looking at each other blankly because we have no clue what's going on. The other day the teacher said 'for those of you who don't have anyone to help you ...' and it made my blood run cold that kids like my kids, who would skip all of it if they get the chance, don't have anyone encouraging/pushing/convincing them. But saying that, we went through weeks of being told about positive cases of parents and kids with a 'you're son's in his class but doesn't need to isolate' way which is a horror movie. So while it's all horrendous, I honestly believe it's a pandemic, and we dont really have options

My Ds is 4 in reception, it breaks my haart, but what I am angry most about is that there is still no plan and no discussion about next steps.
If gov is now saying they wont go back after Feb half term what are they doing?
Why are we not talking about switching Easter holiday around? It is bloody 2.5 weeks, why can we not just take whole Feb off then???
Is it really not possible to organise something in the summer? Like summer camps in open air???
If not then maybe repeat the year? Half the year?
Do something and tell us what it is. What is plan B? What if we have to face this next winter? You have to have plan for each scenario.

But, it seems nothing is possible. I am not against teachers, I appreciate them a lot, but if we are all sacrificing then we ALL have to sacrifice something for example 3 weeks in the summer. We all need to be flexible not just parents.

The most frustration I have is where can I voice this? It feels like noone is listening and the people who shout most about schools and are heard are not even parents. I emailed my MP, but so what.

'Your'

I will look into the data but considering that schools were open for one term out of the last 10 months I'm not sure the rates can be directly compared with those working in face to face roles the entire time.

@AHippoNamedBooBooButt

Although I work in education, I can easily say that a lot of what kids are taught is, in the grand scheme of things, not going to change their world and so no I don’t think they are missing out and I do believe they will catch up. How many adults can fully explain the different forces in science? Or how hurricanes are formed? Or an in-depth explanation of the events leading up to WW1? Or even a frontal adverbial? Most of us can’t. We learnt it at school and then forgot it because we don’t use this knowledge in every day life. It’s good to know, but it’s not going to drastically alter someone’s life chances by not being able to fully analyse Romeo and Juliet. Teach your kids to read, write and do sums. Then watch some documentaries and discuss what you see. That is probably far more valuable right now. The kids really will be ok

All of this.

Plus I'm afraid I simply don't believe that people who have put up with decades of cuts to education, overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, total lack of new technology and decaying school buildings suddenly care about the education of their kids. It's about the free childcare for most.

@Perfect28

I will look into the data but considering that schools were open for one term out of the last 10 months I'm not sure the rates can be directly compared with those working in face to face roles the entire time.

Interesting point

What an incredibly depressing post from someone in education and no it’s not childcare. I really despair at level of education for adults when they say that.

'the ONS looked at data between the 9th of March and 28th December 2020' I think more detail is needed then about how these rates were compared. Hospitality was also closed for a significant amount of that time, and yet many staff would have carried on working to cater for takeaways, not to mention the boom that was eat out to take out.

To Lucy post. Lockdown being about right it that name.

No joy there!

Teachers are not more at risk imo seeing the same 30 children every day than the lady at my tesco who sees 100s and have a screen only in front of her, but not on the side when everybody actually stands paying and packing. I dont even want to get started on masks

Some might want to focus attentions on the few and that’s fine although not sure what it means practically.

Even if dc are ok at home I think this situation isn’t to be lightly accepted. Too much reliance on screen for learning and not enough rl interaction.

Of course the current situation is not ideal for anyone, but we are in the middle of a pandemic. To some extent, we need to accept that it won't be ideal for a while.

My dd would love to be in school with her friends, but she accepts that it isn't possible right now. She is working well at home, and I'm confident that her academic learning isn't suffering. Socially, it's a different story, and she misses the human interaction, but she has found ways of managing it and talks daily to a wide range of people. There are plenty of other kids like her.

I don't think the kids who are coping well need to be the priority right now. We need to focus on the ones who haven't been able to adapt well. What that looks like in practice, I don't know.

Maybe a phased return to school with priority for the kids with poor mental health/fewer coping strategies? Not sure how that would be managed or assessed, but it's worth considering. More virtual 1:1 support for the kids who aren't able to study well independently? Not sure how that would be resourced, but we have found plenty of money to chuck at other problems during the pandemic, so why not education? Allowing some sort of support bubbles for the children who are identified as not coping well?

I don't really know what the solutions are, and these are just ideas off the top of my head, but I think we need to look at what we do for the kids who are more vulnerable (beyond those currently attending school because they have been identified as such) while not trying to make a false case that this is a catastrophe for an entire generation. It isn't.

Alexa if you’d like to wait longer than others that’s fine. Maybe you could opt for it as solution.

But we’re already doing up to two terms as non KW and dc have missed so much. It’s already two tier.

@Perfect28

'the ONS looked at data between the 9th of March and 28th December 2020' I think more detail is needed then about how these rates were compared. Hospitality was also closed for a significant amount of that time, and yet many staff would have carried on working to cater for takeaways, not to mention the boom that was eat out to take out.

Does it include all school staff or just teachers ?

@kingat I'm secondary. I mixed with between 90 and 150 children approx every day, in a small unventated room. If you look at the numbers, primary was deemed less risky than secondary.

Also I would like to point out that socio economic status was not accounted for in this comparison. We know that those in lower socio economic brackets are more likely to die due to numerous factors such as overall health inequalities, less able to take time off sick, more cramped living conditions because of multi generational households or hmos. If this was accounted for the statistics for teachers (generally middle class) would be more extreme.

Unventilated even.

@starrynight19

It breaks down school staff and teachers. I think school staff were even more likely to die than teachers 😕 grim.

But we’re already doing up to two terms as non KW and dc have missed so much. It’s already two tier.

I guess what I'm proposing is some sort of expansion of the "vulnerable" group to include those kids who have really struggled in lockdown. I don't actually think we are talking about vast numbers at secondary level.

Primary is more complicated, as you have the wellbeing of the child to think about but also the wellbeing of the parent. Lots of parents are struggling to combine work and home school, so would inevitably push for places. I don't know what the solution is there, I'm afraid. Possibly some sort of rota system?

Jeez, good thing previous generation did learn the basics of science rather than just read and write, so they were able to invent tvs and smartphones and vaccines. There is a solution lets just make people stupid, who needs to know how rain is made

I just feel sad that my son is getting so isolated. I can barely get him out the house and today I could barely get him to engage in homeschooling and zooms at all. I know one day he will be able to go on a school trip, have a birthday party, have playdates etc. and the pandemic won't last forever. But also, childhoods don't last forever either. He will never be 5 again, reception and now year 1 are not the experiences I'd hoped for him, he should be spending his days playing with friends and learning the basics that will set him up for the rest of school. I'm super glad he's not in an exam year, and throughout the world many kids aren't at school by 5. But he is getting SO isolated and almost reculsive!

We all need to be flexible not just parents.

Teachers are contracted to certain hours. They are not obliged to be 'flexible'.

If they take on hours outside their contracted ones, they need to be paid.

No signs from government over that one...

Just a gradual dawning of awareness that they don't really need to go at all.

I have two 6th formers. Academically they can get on and study without any input but their mental health is really shot now. They are struggling with the lack of interaction with anyone except their parents, inability to do things in groups eg chamber music, sport which all contributed to positive mental health in the past. They are stressed over exams, worried about the future and find it very difficult to cope with the uncertainty of when they might be able to go back.watching them get their hopes up for a return to school and have them dashed over and over again in the first lockdown was heart breaking and was quite soul destroying for them.

It is also hugely unhelpful that my DPs, having now had their 2 doses of the vaccine, are telling them all about the holidays they are booking. I am concerned that there is going to be a massive amount of generational resentment coming out of this crisis.

@LucyLockdown you're in idiot hth.

As for the impacts of the lockdown on children. Well it will vary on a lot of things. Some will suffer more than others.

It was literally just on the BBC news, 4 different families. One family haven't left their flat for 3 weeks due to living on the 14th floor and having to share lifts, cases in their building.

Some dc will probably fall off the radar altogether.

I'm glad it's all being reported on more this time round. At one of my dcs school 43% are doing no work at all.

Some people on mumsnet will carry on pretending it's all great and that the only problem is lazy parents who want free childcare.

There are some very unfortunate views coming to light. Just how much some do not value education. Were they not educated?

Depressing. But glad they are not likely to make any relevant decisions irl. Must be difficult for dc to know it doesn’t matter though.