Children who went to school during isolation and online learning of the Covid pandemic face at least a decade of educational hardship, according to a new report issued Monday. Over 4,000 UK children are diagnosed with anxiety every week.
Children who were born during the height of the pandemic are starting their first year of school this September. Teachers have been noticing how the Covid Class are experiencing problems with academic issues like reading and speaking but also with something as using the bathroom and interacting with other students, The Times reported.
The report by Tim Oates, director of research at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, said secondary schools were also noticing education issues that will follow the Covid students throughout their academic lives. Research has been demonstrating that the effects of the lockdown were far-reaching and diverse and cautions against teachers or parents assuming that the education system is performing as normal.
Oates, who reviewed the UK’s school curriculum in 2010, writes in the report: “Secondary schools are reporting an increase in reading difficulties among Year 7 pupils, poor personal organization and challenging patterns of interaction. Staff in primary schools are reporting very serious problems of arrested language development, lack of toilet training, anxiety in being in social spaces and depressed executive function.”
Commissioned by the Association of School and College Leaders, the report suggests that students be assessed individually for the effects of the Covid long-distance learning program; that teachers work on a student’s “connectedness” to the classroom, not forgetting to reinforce basic lessons of childhood and keeping a child to integrate his or her home life with schooling.
The report says the Covid experience is “not a thing of the past — we can see a public policy challenge which is huge in scale and distributed in unpredictable ways. Different problems are marching up through the system year by year — this ‘rolling process’ is exemplified by major issues now emerging in early primary. It’s entirely understandable that the rhetoric of the autumn of 2021 was ‘let’s get back to normal as soon as possible’. This was right for society and the economy. But ‘back to normal’ might be causing us to seriously underestimate the massive scale and enduring persistence of Covid 19 impact in education.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has said: “We urge the new government to work with us on developing targeted, well-funded policies that respond to the challenges outlined in this report," according to The Times.
