Eerily quiet and sad
Amid many poignant conversation topics this week, what really hit home for me was a feature in The Times exploring the impact of the pandemic on school pupils through interviews with headteachers and a professor of education. While I disagree with the article’s portrayal of a ‘lost generation’ (There is still time after all for these youngsters to get the help and support they deserve!), I certainly agree with the points made around focus, concentration and engagement in school life. The impact is still very evident now.
I have taught some upper key stage two children who have still not fully settled back into school life and routine, even two years later. Instead, school is something to be endured because they would much rather be on a games console or device of some kind. I still don’t think we have really found the solution to support those children who have disengaged and missed out on some of those childhood pleasures.
But labelling them as a lost generation is unlikely to help.
A crisis of communication
For those children coming into school having missed out on those formative school years, learning how to play, to use their imaginations and to socialise with each other, the impact is all the more pronounced. Reflecting on that brought me back to an insightful blog post on the Early Years Staffroom website.
Here, Sarah Detheridge brings together the evidence of the impact on these young learners, arguing that what we have is a communication and language crisis. This will continue to manifest in reception classes for the next few years, especially in schools within areas of high deprivation, and we will continue to see children who are less able to tackle small problems independently (especially those that involve talking things out).
Children who struggle with communication in the first five years of life often struggle to catch up with their peers. At the other end of the school pipeline, as many of 50 per cent of young offenders have an unmet communication and language / learning need. Addressing this crisis is going to define our work for years to come.
Read the room
Staying on the theme of communication, last week was the typically gorgeous World Book Day. Amid the age-old debate about whether dressing up as a superhero is really going to get children reading, the hidden truth was that lots of schools have scaled back on this approach, mostly led by financial considerations. However, celebrating a love of reading is still mission critical, and many have gone down the route of book talk, enjoying and sharing books instead.
Gillian Keegan drew a sarcastic chuckle from me though, as the secretary of state for education marked the day by praising her schools minister.
Going by that tweet, Nick Gibb has single-handedly driven forward a decade’s worth of improvements in reading standards. No mention of the teachers at the chalkface actually teaching phonics and the dreaded nonsense words.
Still, the comments are funny, and a reminder that you can (and should) read rooms as well as books.
The quiet part out loud
And communication was also central to the biggest story in education this week: Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages leaked by Isabel Oakeshott. Gavin Williamson came under heavy fire from the unions after the content of his messages during the pandemic became public, but are we really surprised?
It feels like a bit of an open secret that government messages of gratitude to teachers for what a wonderful job we did during the pandemic were at odds with their true beliefs. Witness Gillian Keegan’s World Book Day tweet and the media representation of teachers during the ongoing strike action. We are work-shy and militant, and it’s the government that is doing what is needed to keep children learning.
Meanwhile, this is the kind of discussion school leaders are having on the weekly #PrimaryRocks chat.
I look forward to the Times feature interviewing headteachers about that.
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