The education time bomb we should be really worried about

On March 20, schools around the country abruptly shut their doors to most children. Ordered to stay home in the face of a terrifying global pandemic, young people saw their lives changed overnight. Some were delighted to be at home – possibly escaping bullying or unbearable academic pressure. But for others, just starting to enjoy independence and about to take exams that would define their futures, it was a shattering blow. For some who lost loved ones, or whose with tumultuous home lives it will have been deeply traumatic. 

A survey from Young Minds showed that 80% of young people with an existing mental health problem felt their mental health had worsened during the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.

As the weeks and months passed, many children felt abandoned as the pubs, shops and theme parks apparently took precedence over education. While some schools switched seamlessly to online teaching, others struggled to provide more than the bare minimum. A government promise to supply laptops and free broadband to the neediest students was broken. Exams were abandoned. Summer schools never happened. Some students have had no contact with their teachers for weeks. 

In homes around the country, parents despaired as their children disengaged with learning, preferring to spend their time on Tiktok than on Teams. With regular summer activities, holidays and social lives cancelled or curtailed, some bored teens turned to gaming by night and sleeping by day. And parents who struggled to combine home education and caring for their teenagers with full-time work felt guilt and stress at failing at both. 

Recent protests have shown that schoolchildren are angry at the system that they feel has failed them. Others may have forgotten about the system altogether. It is a known fact many schools in deprived areas act as in loco parentis. They provide not only education but warmth, food, shelter and the discipline of firm boundaries for many pupils from chaotic and challenging homes. Domestic violence charity Refuge reported a 700% increase in calls to their helpline there were 900 counselling calls to ChildLine about coronavirus made before mid-March. Who knows what some children have been living through while schools have been shut? The Mental Health Foundation has sounded the alarm. "The scale of the challenge isn't yet clear," it says. "But it is likely that significantly increased pastoral care resources will be required well beyond the initial return to school process."  

And there will be challenges for teens from relatively stable homes too, many of whom will have experienced significant disruption to any semblance of a normal routine. 

Already teachers know that they have to refresh students' knowledge which has been lost during the summer break. In the US, where school holidays are almost three months' long, they call this the 'Summer Slide'. Some studies show that children can lose a months' learning during this time, with falls steepest in maths and in children from low-income families. Even more worryingly, research emerging from the US and reported in the New York Times has found that some children will have lost an entire year's worth of learning by September. 

So, what state today's teens will be when they arrive at school, bleary-eyed in their new uniforms? Add in new discipline around hand-sanitiser stations and social distancing, and you can see how this could be the next education time-bomb waiting to go off. 

Dr Angharad Rudkin is a clinical psychologist and consultant on Tanith Carey's new book 'What's My Teenager Thinking? Practical Child Psychology for Modern Parents' says; "Teens will be anxious or even panicking about how on earth they can catch up with missed work in time for GSCE or A levels. They will be worried about how they will fit in with peers after so long. They may feel angry that a system they had come to view as broadly stable and predictable no longer feels that way."

One parent says, "My son goes into Year 11 in September and is resentful that he will have it tougher than the group who got their results this year. He's missed so much work, it's unfair that he will have to sit exams and they didn't." Another parent says, "The jump from GCSE to A level is always a shock, and I'm worried it's going to be much worse after so long out of the classroom. All the good habits of discipline, homework and concentrated learning have gone out of the window. 

"If my son had to sit an A level in gaming he'd get an A* as that is all he's done since his GCSE's were cancelled in March," sighs another.

Another alarming aspect of the return to school is the gulf that has developed between the most and least disadvantaged students. One teacher describes it as a "chasm". Natalie Perera is Executive Director and Head of Research at the Education Policy Institute. She says that even before lockdown, the very worst-off pupils were almost two years behind all other pupils by the time they finished their GCSEs. And research by the Education Endowment Foundation suggests this gap is likely to have now widened by a staggering 36%. This means that teachers face an uphill and possibly impossible battle to try to restore lost learning in the face of looming exams. 

The government has allocated £650m for school catch-up work. But David Laws, Executive Chairman of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), has described this as "badly targeted". Schools in affluent areas are getting as much money as schools where children are in poverty. This means the fund is "unlikely to prevent a widening of the learning gap between children from poor backgrounds and other pupils". 

A teacher at an inner-city comprehensive says, "After so long, we don't expect children to pick up where they left off. Instead, they will have a recovery curriculum to ease in gently." Another teacher adds, "I am anxious about all the new rules there will be to impose on the kids, like social distancing. Children tend to ignore the rules. They want to hug each other after being apart for so long. This means there will be a whole other level of discipline we'll have to be on top of."

Astonishingly, with so little time before the school gates open, teachers still haven't been told about changes to some of next year's GCSE exams. One teacher says, "Learning is all about relationships. If a kid likes, trusts and respects you, they will go the extra mile. Yet we are going to walk into the classroom and say, 'No, we don't know what the paper will look like. We don't know what the mark scheme will be." How can we tell them that everyone has their best interests at heart?" 

Some parents fear that teens may resist teachers' demands to complete work or do homework. After all, they were able to refuse to study without any sanctions during lockdown. Or they may have not even been set work for months. 

Research during the pandemic found that a third of children and young people were not engaging with any work set by teachers. Of those who did, they only studied for two and a half hours a day. A fifth did no work or less than an hour a day at home. On average, only 20% of children were given four or more pieces of schoolwork a day. There was no consistent approach or anyone even monitoring what was offered.

Professor Francis Green of University College London's Institute of Education, who led the research, said it "painted a gloomy picture of lost schooling and low amounts of schoolwork at home". 

Reachwell.org is a collection of academics concerned with the needs of children and adolescents during the pandemic. One of these academics, Uta Frith, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London, has written that lack of schooling may even have affected teenagers' growing brains. "Structure influences the development of frontal brain regions during primary and secondary school, and if lacking, leads to impulsive and disruptive behaviour."

She added, "The ability to be with peers and being outside the family is another beneficial side effect of universal schooling and considered essential for the development of social belonging and identity. But this is not all, the ability to get advice from trusted adults outside the family can be a lifesaver for children in problematic home environments. Social relations to peers and to other adults in a diverse society have to be learned, including politeness and tolerance, and this learning is vital to create the citizens of the future."

However, not everyone is pessimistic about the great return. Former teacher Tom Bennett now advises the Department of Education on how to improve behaviour in schools. He says worry that feral teens will find it impossible to adjust to classroom discipline may be misguided. "We have seen from the experience of other countries that most children really enjoy going back to school and engage well when they get there", he says. "We underestimate how much they like familiarity, learning and being with their peers." While teens may not want to tell their parents that they like school, he says "most of us want to have something useful and constructive to do." Bennett says, "There is justifiable concern that children will have lost the habit of being in school, but good schools will be aware of this. They will specifically teach what standards of behaviour they want to see right from the start, not just respond to bad behaviour."

Many parents dread trying to wake their nocturnal teens and believe it will be hard to convince young people that lateness or missing a day of school matters much. After all, they've already missed so much. However, Bennett says, "I think the vast majority of young people recognise that COVID was like a meteor coming from space. The damage done to their education will make every minute of learning more precious. It could even make attendance and punctuality an even easier sell."

Schools, he says, should effusively welcome their students as this will reassure them. "They should tell kids they are glad to see them and look forward to teaching them," he says. "And while some children may have lost their habits of getting up early, focussing, washing or taking turns, behaviour is fluid. Young people can flip from one set of norms to another quite quickly. We must say to kids, 'we are asking this of you because we care about you'". 

How You Can Help

Angharad Rudkin offers tips to help your teen's return to school go smoothly. 

• Be emotionally available. Make some opportunities for one-on-one time, like a dog walk or coffee together. Don't dismiss any feelings as silly or irrational. Chat through what they have liked and didn't like. Ask them how they imagine school will be different and ask open-ended questions.
• Sit down together and agree on reasonable routines. A week before they return, introduce the idea of a 'digital sunset', keeping gadgets out of their bedrooms as night falls. Aim to bring wake-up time half an hour earlier each day until you reach school rising time.
• Wean teens off gaming. Tricky, but agree to some limits, like no gameplay after dinner. Helping them work out new rules for themselves means they are more likely to stick to them. 
•  Talk about the 'why' of school. Teens who have enjoyed their time off may not see the point of returning. Discuss how school is a place to learn social skills, work in a group and do practical learning in subjects like science, drama and music. Reassure them, teachers will help them target their education gaps.

Is your child prepared to go back to school? Tell us in the comments section below