Have the cohort starting 2020 been writen off by schools?

[stickygotstuck]

After yet another disappointment with DD's (supossedly well-regarded) secondary school, I can't help but wonder whether there are any/some/many schools out there which seem to have written off the cohort of kids that started Year 7 in 2020, mid pandemic? In a 'these are never going to catch up anyway, why waste time/resources on them' kind of way.

For the kids now in Year 9 there was no induction in y7 and no start of year, getting-to-know-you residential. Also no meeting the teachers in person. Ever. They have continued with the franky insufficient 4-minute online parent evenings for 3 years now, with not enough slots to speak to all teachers, and with no plans to go back to physical sessions.

Compare this with those currently in Year 8 - two weeks of 'summer school' in their new school before start of year 7, physical 'meet the teacher' event in school with drinks and nibbles during year 8, one extra residential in year 8.

Am I imagining things or does anyone have similar experiences?
The 'meet the teacher' even did piss me off, I must admit!

But for school it wasn’t individual - it was whole bubbles (often year groups) and often repeatedly.

Not in February 2020 it wasn't. Certainly not officially anyway.

Bubbles weren't a thing. Households were.
My believe went in the skiing trip. A couple of people in her year developed coughs and had to isolate. Their households and school friends didn't.

The whole bubble thing for schools was from September 2020 onwards,and yes could mean whole school classes.

This. Every school child was affected whatever the age.

I have one in that year group who experienced all that but fortunately they are resilient and bounced ok. My current yr 12 not so.

But my eldest was in yr 11 in 2020; no GCSES, no prom, no finishing school, no getting the exam results you worked for, not picking up your exam results and then not starting 6th form college properly either-no getting to know each other outside the classroom and making friends etc. complete fucked up time.

I think my year 9 had an easier time of it than my year 10. Missing the end of Y6 was not a big issue for us and at secondary by the second lockdown they had zoom lessons for each class so there was less of an impact. In the first lockdown school gave them self directed projects to work on and my conscientious DD worked really hard at them and drove herself slight mad because they took up so much of her day. My y9 has had the option of lots of foreign school trips whereas y10 got none (school doesn't allow foreign school trips during GCSE years).

Having said that we very much emphasised to our DC how lucky they were during lockdown, we had no worries about our work or money, we have a lovely big house with plenty of room for all 5 of us to work and study in different rooms and everyone had their own computer, my 3DC were already settled at school but were not in important exam years, in a busy house they didn't feel socially isolated, we didn' lose anyone close to us. I think you owe it to your DC to move on from lockdown and count your blessings.