By Gavin Mackintosh-
New social distancing measures along with anxiety from behind on school work is affecting a number of Uk students on their return to school.
A new report from education regulator Ofsted revealed that some students have become more anxious and irritable due to the new social distancing measures and being behind on school work during school closures.
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The evidence based on one-day pilot interim visits with no graded judgement covered 121 pilot visits. Ofsted said some leaders said that they had noticed that some pupils’ physical health seemed to have deteriorated during the lockdown period.
Pupils’ anxiety was associated with a variety of factors, including health, new social distancing arrangements in school, being behind with schoolwork, and worries about being away from home.
Leaders described how they were providing additional support for affected pupils, including one-to-one counselling and, in a few cases, a phased return to school. According to the report, the communication skills of many pupils had regressed as a result of school closures, and there was a noticeable impact of pupils having missed out on physiotherapy and speech and language therapy. Some of their pupils were finding it more difficult to concentrate on their learning than usual.
The report also revealed that many pupils were showing less resilience, for example becoming quickly upset if the work seemed difficult, or giving up more easily. Some, they thought, also seemed to have shorter concentration spans than usual and seemed tired. The report also found more than a third of schools visited had seen a rise in pupils being home-educated because of parental anxiety over the pandemic.
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Some schools told Ofsted that COVID-19 had not had an impact on the number of their safeguarding cases or referrals, but in other cases there had been an increase in safeguarding cases, mostly attributed to incidents of domestic abuse. The issue of cross agency networking varied among schools, with some reporting an improved standard and others claiming external agencies were operating below capacity.
A number of school leaders said they were using assessment to find out what pupils had learned in different subjects during last term, and to consider anything they had forgotten or regressed in. Some primary school leaders, for example, said that pupils had fallen behind with their reading fluency and comprehension. Several leaders told Ofsted that their pupils were more subdued than usual.
Others told us that they needed to revise letter sounds that had been covered in remote learning lessons, because pupils had not had the practice they needed to support them in remembering the new sounds.
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