Do you think your kids' educational achievement will suffer?

[Echobelly]

I think I'm lucky as my kids aren't in really essential years (start of primary, secondary exams) and both schools are mounting a fairly good provision online, especially the secondary. And TBF, we are a very fortunate household where the kids have space and equipment to learn. Even with DS (Y5) having ADHD, I don't feel as though either of them will underperform academically in the long run because of this.

Emotionally/socially I have more concerns for what they've missed out on, especially with DS having some challenges to managing social skills, and DD missing out on chunks of her first and second year of secondary school - I feel that chould have more of an impact for them than missed learning.

100% yes. My two are gcse years. Daughter is already way behind, she was struggling before all this. My son has already been moved down a set in maths. If my daughter gets any GCSE’s now it will be a miracle.

Oldest is at college. Courses have moved online this term, and were a bit disrupted last year, but not until all the assignments had already been submitted. He's probably benefitted in that it's allowed him to mix college and work, and become a lot more independent and self organised as a result. He's grown up a lot, and won't have any problem going off to Uni and being responsible for himself next year.

Youngest (y9) isn't worried about home schooling as most of his friends are from out of school activities, not school. He's been bullied in the past, and I think is actually glad to be out of the school environment from that point of view. Schoolwork wise, it's definitely not as good - lessons mostly seem to consist of self drive powerpoints, and there's not an easy mechanism to ask for help if he gets stuck, or for more work in the subjects where he's completing things in a fraction of the time allocated.

I imagine yr8 DC will catch up & Uni-age DC will be ok (6 yr course anyway).

Yr12 DS is rather disengaged from college & his GCSEs will be called made up. So his life-long career prospects are currently not good.

Yes , worried about son in 2nd year at uni, he is really disappointed and disheartened ,says he is disgusted with how both uni management and government don't seem to care .
I think he is considering quitting .
Year 8 child , i think she will be fine , hopefully will catch up but i don't think she is too far behind anyway .
Mentally i can see a difference in her in this lockdown ,not quite as happy , but she loves being at home.
I too worry about less fortunate families .

Year 12 DD is getting along fine, she’s motivated to sign into lessons and complete all work.

Year 8 DS has ASD and is very dyslexic, remote learning isn’t working for him. The teachers have only this week (assessment week) asked to see any work, for the last few weeks there hasn’t been any accountability which made it easier for DS to disengage. His mental health is also suffering.

I'm worried for mine now it's going on so long. I'm a single parent working out of the home so mine are having to work while I'm out so they have nobody there to help them.

My Y10 is trying to do the first year of her GCSE's and my Y7 isnt finding it easy to engage in school work without me there. Both are missing their friends. My adult daughter is home but not really that much help with the school side.

I'm not worried. Reports from all my dc's schools are positive. They are all quite high achievers I think I would worry more if they were not. DS2 has actually come in to his own since this lockdown. He seems to be much more confident when his class can't see him and is doing things like read aloud to the class which he would never do before.

Mine will be fine but there is a real “I’m alright Jack” attitude on mumsnet about all matters affecting lockdown. As long as their kids eduction is not that impacted they don’t really give a shit that this period of home schooling is hugely detrimental some - especially the most disadvantaged kids An already large gap is widening with every week that schools are closed. So it doesn’t really matter how many people on this thread say their kids are fine, they’re not the ones whose education has been ruined and life chances seriously jeopardised.

Some individuals won't be impacted, some will. There have been loads of times when schools have been closed, there's plenty of research about what happens to kids during this time, and it's almost universally bad, they are impacted as a whole, their life time earnings, their happiness, and their health were all impacted.

The exception I found was where the place was so racist, it didn't actually matter at all if the black kids went to school or not, they weren't going to do well either way.

Unless they repeat huge chunks of the year, despite my best efforts then yes of course they’ll be affected.

Mine is year 6. She's doing fine. Perfectly happy and doing plenty of work that's been provided by school. She's behind where she would have been if we didn't have lockdown, but she's got plenty of time to learn what she'll need to learn before exams. I'm a secondary teacher and quite frankly she would fit in an average year 7 class in an average year. So she'll be ok.

Most of the kids are in the same boat. They'll all get back into the swing of things when we do finally get back to normal. I think the social and emotional side is most important when we get back. There are so many kids who will need to re learn how to get along with their peers and how to behave at school, as it is very, very different at home.

No not at all it's like long school holidays, no one ever talks about the dc who get put in child care from first thing in the morning until last thing at night, they will be loving being at home!

Anyway I think most dc bounce back quickly, this is their normal. Difficult for dc at other ages and stages.... Mine are perfect ages for this really.

Accademically they are fine and younger dd needs to over learn,I suspect more goes in with me helping than being missed and lost in the class.

Surely it’s down to us as parents though to ensure the impact is minimal. Schools have a duty to provide the work but it remains our responsibility to ensure its done even if it means being very creative as to when it’s fitted in,

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Surely it’s down to us as parents though to ensure the impact is minimal. Schools have a duty to provide the work but it remains our responsibility to ensure its done even if it means being very creative as to when it’s fitted in,

Some parents are unable or unwilling to provide this support. Which is exactly why so many children’s education is suffering hugely and not attending school will cause such damage -these kids won’t just catch up. But as long as mumsnet posters’ kids are ok then let’s ignore the others.

Yes, my child will leave Year 2 struggling to read. It's not for want of parental engagement. He's so resistant to learning from us.

I'm paying for a tutor to help him catch up so Year 3 isn't a disaster.

Not sure why anyone wants to pretend all kids will magically recover and catch up. That won't be the case for many, for a myriad of reasons.

Surely it’s down to us as parents though to ensure the impact is minimal. Schools have a duty to provide the work but it remains our responsibility to ensure its done even if it means being very creative as to when it’s fitted in,

Mar-July 2020 school provided zero new content, some revision worksheets. This lockdown I'm not sure if there are supposed to be new bits but nothing like on the scale there would be in school. And teachers will have to go over anything new again as they have no idea who's understood or even looked at it. So the class are going to be most of a year behind by the time they start back. It's bound to impact even the ones with good home support.

DS1 y5 has SENs. EHCP application in progress. We do maths. That's what he copes with. He struggles writing sentences and paragraphs, but I'm just too exhausted to even trigger the meltdowns by attempting English at this point. Spending an hour in an emotional battle with ranting, slamming doors and repeated rounds of "calm down time" to get 3 sentences is beyond my coping threshold now. School were warned and he did not submit any work March-July (we went off piste)

My real concern is coping with y6 and secondary applications/ transition. His EHCP application was delayed by 4 months away from school and the system grinding to a halt (diagnosis end of 2019). We haven't been able to view secondaries and our local one won't suit his needs, so unless there are open evenings in September, I'll have to guess randomly (probably taking a punt on my most recent school)

My y3 just isn't mature enough to deal with remote learning, and only having DS1 as a companion is not the best role model for developing a work ethic. I am now querying dyslexia with some of his issues (rather likely with DS1's collection of diagnoses). Socially he's really struggling. His friendships weren't well developed and he's in a class with a small pool of boys. The boys he favours have remained in school and the friendship has continued without him and he didn't slot back in during the autumn term. It was November before he revealed the extent of the problem. It's going to take time to undo the damage and loss of social confidence caused by isolation and over dependence on a neyrodiverse sibling.

And mine are lucky ones with a parent who already gave up her teaching career to make time for them, access to space and resources including a computer each.

The trouble is, the more young people struggle for whatever reason (learning, mental wellbeing, social skills, delayed SEN diagnosis...) the more the provision for the whole cohort is affected as the gap widens and resourcing is stretched thinner.

My Year 6 boy doesn’t seem to be learning anything new - he can complete all the maths correctly without accessing the “teaching videos” and “teaching slides” which suggests he already knows how to do it, and while he is enjoying writing stories I don’t think he is learning anything new by doing so. I don’t know whether he would have been covering anything different at school though, and without Covid it would have been a constant round of SATs revision which wouldn’t have taught him anything new anyway. So in general I think he will be OK.
The Year 8 is having all his lessons on Teams as normal and doesn’t seem to be falling behind so I think he will be OK as well. We are lucky in that they are both in years where they are not particularly affected.

I'm not concerned about my three academically however one of my DS's is perfectly happy at home and admits that he can be quite antisocial. He struggled going back last summer and I am worried how he will settle again.

Things like missed residential and outdoor activity trips also bother me. Youngest has never been on one, all three have missed various ones and I just feel they are so character building and important for independence.

@Snookie00 completely agree - and all the parents saying no to an extended term/school day etc but will be already using wraparound care and holiday clubs not everyone can afford. Our extras bill is well over £3k a year - plenty of families don't have that.

Yes year 10 here. Since last March been in school 74 days and out over 140 school days. Nothing learned summer of year 9 and this term is just box ticking and I can hand on heart say he's learned nothing really. So sad

Twins in year 5 here. One will be fine, is bright and is keeping up well academically. Misses seeing friends in person but does Cubs, gaming and other social chats on Zoom

The other is autistic, hates school and wasn’t engaging anyway...hasn’t really done any schoolwork for a year now. Loves lockdown and is far happier than when he has to go to school. COVID won’t be the thing which causes his lack of educational achievement and in many ways I’m grateful for the break from the daily battle to get him into school...

BogRollBOGOF good post and I share some of your concerns especially your final paragraph.

No. Year 13, wfh since Feb. 2019 because if family circumstances. Motivated and worked really hard.

We still have no idea how A levels will be graded thanks to D**khead Williamson, but confident he’ll achieve the UCAS points he needs for his undergrad course.

I think mine R and yr 2 will meet age related expectations but not meet their potential. My yr 2 is bright and was already looked over a lot as the staff needed to help those not meeting expectations and imagine the focus will be even more on helping those children when they return due to such limited resources.

I would prefer her to be at this end of the scale though and we will do our best to continue to help her.

My R child started late (they didn't take reception until 3 weeks after term started,) plus a class isolation period and now closed to her, she's doing ok at home but I'm sure she would be doing much better at school!