Children, as any parent knows, are not small adults. Their brain is growing and being acutely shaped by their environment and experience. Social skills and values are learnt from those around them, with teamwork, risk-management, personal boundaries and tolerance being learned through play with other children. Their immune system is imprinting environmental contact into a set of responses that will shape health in later life. Their bodies grow physically and become adept at physical skills. They learn both trust and mistrust through interaction with adults.
This rapid physical and psychological growth makes children highly vulnerable to harm. Withdrawal of close contact with trusted adults and enforced distancing has large emotional and physical impacts, in common with other primates. Lack of experience also leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by adults who are pushing certain attitudes or beliefs – often called ‘grooming’. For these reasons, our forebears put specific protections and norms of behaviour in place that elevated the needs of children above adults.
However, protecting children did not involve enclosing them in a padded cell – policymakers knew this to be harmful to psychological and physical development. It involved allowing children to explore their environment and society, whilst taking measures to shield them from malfeasance, including from those who would harm them directly or through ignorance or neglect.
The act of imposing risks on children for the perceived benefit of adults was therefore considered one of the worst crimes. The most cowardly use of ‘human shields’.
Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child places children at the centre of public decision-making:
In all actions concerning children…. the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
When we are complicit in acts that we know are wrong, we naturally look for ways to avoid acknowledging our part in it or excuse the actions as being ‘for a greater good’. But lying to ourselves is not a good way to correct a wrong. As we have seen in other acts of institutional child abuse, it allows the abuse to fester and expand. It advances the interests and safety of the perpetrators over that of the victims.
Covid as a means for targeting children
In early 2020, a virus outbreak was noted in Wuhan, China. It was soon clear that this relatively novel coronavirus overwhelmingly targeted the sick and elderly, particularly those on unhealthy Western diets. The Diamond Princess incident showed, however, that even among the elderly the vast majority would survive the illness (COVID-19), with many not even becoming ill.
In response, Western public health institutions, politicians and media turned on children. Society implemented policies never seen before: a whole-of-society approach that was expected to increase poverty and inequality, particularly targeting lower-income people, and disrupt childhood development. It included restrictions on children’s play, education and communication, and used psychological manipulation to convince them that they were a threat to their parents, teachers and grandparents. Policies such as isolation and travel restriction, normally applied to criminals, were applied to whole populations.
The novel public health response was designed by a small but influential group of very wealthy people, often called philanthropists, and international institutions which they have funded and co-opted over the past decade. These same people would go on to be greatly enriched through the ensuing response. Encouraged by these same but now even wealthier people, governments are now working to entrench these responses to build a poorer, less free and more unequal world into which all children will grow.
Whilst rarely discussed in public spaces, strategies of targeting and sacrificing children for the gratification of adults are not new. However, it is a practice that normally elicits disgust. We can now understand better, having been part of it, how such actions can creep into a society and become integral to its character. People find it easy to condemn the past whilst excusing the present; asking reparations for past slavery whilst advocating for cheaper batteries produced through current child slavery, or condemning past institutionalised child abuse whilst condoning it when it happens within their own institutions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not asking us to look to the past, but to the present. The most mature society is one that can face itself, calmly and with its eyes open.
The abandonment of evidence
Aerosolised respiratory viruses, such as coronaviruses, spread in tiny airborne particles over long distances and are not interrupted by cloth face coverings or surgical masks. This has been long-established and has been confirmed again by the US CDC in a meta-analysis of influenza studies published in May 2020.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus was somewhat unusual (though not unique) in its targeting of a cell receptor in the lining of the respiratory tract, ACE-2 receptors, to enter and infect cells. These are expressed less in children, meaning children are intrinsically less likely to be severely infected or transmit large viral loads to others. This explains the study outcomes early in the COVID-19 epidemic that demonstrated very low transmission from children to school teachers, and adults living with children having a lower-than-average risk. It explains why Sweden, following former evidence-based recommendations from the World Health Organisation (WHO), kept schools open with no ill effects on health.
Armed with this knowledge, we (as a society) closed schools and forced children to cover their faces, reducing their educational potential and impairing their development. Knowing that school closures would disproportionately harm low-income children with poorer computer access and home study environments, we ensured that the children of the wealthy would widen their advantage for the next generation. In low income countries, these school closures worked as expected, increasing child labour and condemning up to 10 million additional girls to child to child marriage and nightly rape.
Abusing children at home
For many, school provides the only stable and secure part of their lives, providing the vital pastoral and counselling work which identifies and supports children in crisis. When pupils are out of school the most vulnerable are the most affected, teachers can’t pick up the early warning signs of abuse or neglect, and children have no one they can tell. For children with special needs, essential access to multi-agency support frequently ceased.
Sport and extracurricular activities are important in children’s lives. Events such as school plays, school trips, choirs and the first and last days at school mark out their lives and are vital for their social development. Friendships are crucial for their emotional development, particularly during the crucial stages of growth – childhood, adolescence and young adulthood – and especially when there are vulnerabilities or special needs, children need access to family, friends, services and support.
The result of this neglect, as highlighted by a recent a UCL study on the outcomes of U.K. Government restrictions on children in 2020-2022, was nothing short of a disaster:
The impact of the pandemic will have detrimental consequences for children and young people in the short and long-term, with many not yet visible, it will have continuing consequences for their future in terms of professional life trajectories, healthy lifestyles, mental well-being, educational opportunities, self-confidence and more besides.
As the study finds: “Children were forgotten by policymakers during Covid lockdowns.”
Infants, children and teenagers endured numerous lockdowns during their most formative years, despite accounting for a diminutive proportion of Covid hospitalisations and deaths. The UCL study found that politicians did not consider children and young people a “priority group” when English lockdowns were enforced. Infants born into the Covid restrictions have marked delays in brain and thought development.
Education is provided to children as it benefits their educational and psychological development, provides a safe and protective environment and is a way of improving equality. So it was to be expected that when schools closed there would be development losses in very young children, reduced education attainment throughout the age profile, mental health issues and a rising tide of abuse.
In the U.K., 840 million school days were lost to the class of 2021 and nearly two million of England’s nine million pupils are still failing to attend school regularly. As early as November 2020, Ofsted, the body which inspects and reports on schools in England, reported that the majority of children were going backwards educationally. Regression was found in communication skills, physical development and independence. These impacts are seen across Europe and are likely to be lifelong. Despite this, the policies continued.
In the United States, school closures affected an estimated 24.2 million U.S. schoolchildren absent from school (1.6 billion worldwide) and the educative deterioration there is particularly clear. Schoolchildren have fallen behind in their learning by almost a year according to the latest assessments from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). About a third of the students didn’t reach the lowest reading benchmark and maths saw the steepest decline in history. As poorer students will have less access to the internet and support for remote learning, school closures also widen racial and ethnic inequalities.
And when schools did reopen in the U.K. a damaging and restrictive set of regulations were introduced: wearing masks, testing, bubbles, playground restrictions and static timetables. Post-primary children were spending all day in the same room, masked for nine hours per day if they used public transport to get to school. Isolation and quarantining led to continual absences. Teachers trained to know this approach was harmful continued to implement it.
The recent Ofsted report from Spring 2022 highlighted the damaging effects of the restrictions on the development of young children and should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing as it recorded:
- Delays in babies’ physical development
- A generation of babies struggling to crawl and communicate
- Babies suffering delays in learning to walk
- Delays in speech and language (noted to be partly attributable to imposition of facemasks)
This latter has also been noted by practitioners such as the Head of the Speech and Language unit in N. Ireland:
A growing number of young children are experiencing significant communication problems following the lockdowns and some who can’t talk at all, they grunt or they point at things they want and who don’t know how to speak to the other children.
A study by Irish researchers found that babies born during March to May 2020, when Ireland was locked down, were less likely to be able to say at least one definitive word, point or wave goodbye at 12 months old. A further study published in Nature found children aged three months to three years scored almost two standard deviations lower in a proxy measurement of development similar to IQ. With 90% of brain development taking place in the first five years of life, this has been tragic. Many children in this age group are now starting school far behind, biting and hitting, overwhelmed around large groups and unable to settle and learn with the social and educational skills of a child two years younger.
From a mental health viewpoint, we as a society attacked the mental health of children, following policies we knew were harmful and even designed to stoke fear; a direct form of abuse. Children were shut away in their bedrooms, isolated from friends, told they were a danger to others and that non-compliance may kill granny. An agenda of fear was imposed on them.
In the U.K. there are an astonishing one million children awaiting mental health support, whilst more than 400,000 children and young people a month are being treated for mental health problems – the highest number on record. More than a third of young people said they feel their life is spiralling out of control and more than 60% of 16-25-year-olds said they were scared about their generation’s future, 80% of young people reporting a deterioration in their emotional well-being.
As early as autumn 2020, U.K.’s Ofsted had identified:
- A 42% rise in self-harm and eating disorders
- An ‘explosion’ of children with disabling tic disorders
- Record numbers of children being prescribed antidepressants
- Increases in self-harm
In addition, five times more children and young people committed suicide than died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic in the U.K. In the U.S., CDC reported that emergency department visits were 50.6% higher among girls aged 12-17 due to suicide attempts From early 2020, it was known that children were barely affected by the virus, having a 99.9987% survival chance, while they were not a danger to others.
Abusing children far away
Numbers are not people, so when we discuss dead or harmed children in large numbers, it can be difficult to understand the real impact. This allows us to gloss over the impact. However, UNICEF tells us that almost a quarter of a million children were killed by the lockdowns in 2020 in South Asia alone. That is 228,000, each with a mother and father, probably brothers or sisters.
Most additional child lockdown deaths will have been particularly unpleasant, as malnutrition and infections are hard ways to die. These deaths were anticipated by the WHO and the public health community in general. They would have lived without the lockdowns, so they were ‘added’ deaths.
The WHO estimates about 60,000 additional children are dying each year since 2020 from malaria. Many more are dying from tuberculosis and other childhood illnesses. With about a billion additional people in severe food deprivation (near starvation), there will probably be some millions more hard, painful deaths to come. It is hard to watch a child dying. But someone like us, often a parent, watched and suffered through each of these deaths.
While many in the public health and ‘humanitarian’ industries tell tales about stopping a global pandemic, those watching these deaths knew they were unnecessary. They knew that these children had been betrayed. Some perhaps can still claim ignorance, as the Western media have found discussion of these realities awkward. Their main private sponsors are profiting from the programmes causing these deaths, as others once benefitted from the abuse and killing to secure cheap rubber from the Belgian Congo or the mining of rare metals in Africa today. Exposing mass child deaths-for-profit will not please the investment houses that own both media and media’s Pharma sponsors. But deaths are the same whether the media cover it or not.
Why we did this
There is no simple answer as to why society reversed its norms of behaviour and pretended, en masse, that lies were truth and truth was a lie. Nor a simple answer as to why child welfare came to be considered dispensable, and children a threat to others. Those who orchestrated the closing of schools knew that it would increase long-term poverty and, therefore, poor health. They knew of the inevitability of increased child labour, child brides, starvation and death. This is why we run clinics, support food programmes and try to educate children.
None of the harms from the Covid response were at all unexpected. The children of the wealthy benefited, whilst the children of the less well-off were disproportionately harmed. This is the way society has worked historically – we just fooled ourselves that we had developed something better.
What is most concerning is that three years in, we are not just ignoring what we did, but are planning to expand and institutionalise these practices. Those who gained most financially from COVID-19, who backed this society-wide attack on the most vulnerable, wish this to be a permanent feature of life. There is no serious enquiry into the harms of the global response because these were expected, and those in charge have profited from them.
The desired reset was achieved; we have reset our expectations regarding truth, decency and the care of children. In an amoral world the happiness, the health and the life of a child only carries the importance we are told to attach to it. To change that, we would have to stand against the tide. History will remember those who did and those who did not.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease.
Hugh McCarthy is a retired headteacher in Northern Ireland who until recently served as a director on two of the province’s main education councils and who remains a ministerial appointment on one.
This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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“At all times they have acted in the interests of their dues-paying members ” Have they? I think that’s highly debatable to say the least. They may have purported to do so, but that’s not the same thing.
The last paragraph is quite simply false. The vast majority of teachers have been physically present in school for much of the time since March 2020, teaching either the full cohort, or key workers’ children.
And people who down- tick me might like to provide some actual evidence about the absurd final para.
My daughter was sent in as a child of an ‘essential worker’.
The teaching assistants were there as babysitters. The teacher uploaded pre-recorded lessons from her home to google classroom which my daughter had to complete at home that evening anyway. The assistants didn’t do anything except keep them doing certain activities.
My OH is currently a teaching assistant. She was doing overtime, covering classes doing teaching throughout the last 15 months, while teachers did live online teaching , she and is still doing the heavy lifting of “curriculum drivers” , for minimum wage. And all in the freezing cold all winter with all doors and windows open .Not the same everywhere of course.
i’m not sure what people really think TAs should do for minimum wage, but the schools very often get amazing value. My OH is a fully qualified teacher with 30 years experience .
I haven’t down-ticked you, but I note that you haven’t supplied any evidence for your claim.
Exactly what proportion is “the vast majority” and what constitutes “much of the time”?
go look it up. Schools have been open and teaching in person and online all the way through.
the claim in the article is just plain wrong.
This is simply untrue. Individual schools in a local area were open and acted as hubs for that surrounding area, all “essential worker’s’ kids from all the schools in the area would then feed into that one school. So it’s false to say all schools were open.
Also those hub schools only had a skeleton staff with teachers working on a rota, most would only have to be physically present in the school for a few days out of a month… That’s a fact.
Can I add for clarification in case you missed it, one of the authors is is American..
Donald S. Siegel is Foundation Professor of Public Policy and Management at Arizona State University
And it is also a fact that some American schools, California comes to mind, have been closed for months on end.
Fact.
Just to add as someone mentioned before, the very few teachers who were physically present in school weren’t actually doing any teaching. They were essentially babysitting. Kids in the school followed the same online learning garbage as other kids, so the few teachers in that day were there to make sure social distancing was adhered to and playtime, lunchtime protocols followed.
Sadly teachers have to face up to the FACT that they have not come out of this whole debacle looking like they want to teach children.
They are going to have to work damn hard to get parents like me back on their side.
FACT.
Yes I am angry.
My wife is a teacher at a 1200 pupil school. About half of the teachers and half of the pupils were in all through the school “closures” due to the keyworker provisions.
My primary school teacher ex daughter in law (still on good terms) has not lost a single day off work since this stupidity began.
Optimist. Unfortunately, this topic is like fly-paper to axe-grinders who aren’t much interested in the subtleties of reality and evidence.
Likewise your second sentence….
Partial agreement. Teacher friends of mine did remote teaching for many months, but were delivering lessons in the classroom for much of the autumn, and again since about March. They loathe online teaching (“educating a wall”) and dislike talking for hours whilst wearing a mask. Chafes the ears, apparently.
I have upticked you. The majority of teachers at my children’s school were at school throughout the lockdown period. I know that is not true of every school, but I think the idea that most teachers were hiding at home is a little overdone.
I think the headline is correct to attack the teachers unions rather than individual teachers. I think many individual teachers were happy to work, and did so.
Yep, that struck me too. Odd statement, to say the least.
Surely more accurate would have been something along the lines of: Unlike almost all other “essential” workers, many teachers have had long periods in the year from March 2020 when they did not physically report to work.
I don’t understand the 5 downvotes (as I write, explanations anyone?), and have upvoted you.
Absolute NONSENSE and I have family members who are teachers to corroborate.
I agree. I stopped reading at this point as this is completely untrue. The vast majority of teachers have been physically present for the whole of the Autumn term, and in England since 12 March. My daughter is a teacher, works super-hard normally, but is having to work extra super-hard at the moment delivering all the Government’s catch-up programmes. These profs need to get out more. You only need to have walked past schools to have seen that they have been full of children, apart from last Spring and in Jan and Feb this year.
“What motivates local and national politicians to collude with public sector unions to prolong lockdowns”
Presumably the author asks that for people not frequenting this site. People need to get their heads out of the sand. This is not about a pandemic, this is a coordinated attack on democracy. Let’s stop pretending and hoping it’s just a virus going about.
Who doesn’t like to do no work, be paid in full and not endure furlough and 80% pay, and have oven-ready excuses?
Spot on, the lazy fuckers teachers MPs Drs council cunts fuck them all
Bit harsh. I know loads of teachers most are certainly NOT lazy. It’s a surprisingly demanding job done by people who generally want to do it well and work hard.
Debatable.
Big part of the problem is the very large cohort who get into teaching not for the kids but for the amazing holidays. The shocking realisation that they actually have work to do as well is a but much for some.
The adage.. those who can do, those who can’t teach has more than a grain of truth to it.
A lot of teachers wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the private sector.
When I graduated all of my 8 closest friends went into teaching, I was the only one who went into the private sector. When I asked them why they all said “because it is an easier life”. This is true, there is more risk in the private sector, says he who has been made redundant twice, but what sort of a negative attitude is this to be driving the behaviour of people who have a massive influence on children, the future of our country?
Most.
Yeah… what could motivate people being paid to stay at home to push for lockdowns that would permit them to continue being paid to stay at home…? I guess we’ll never know.
Why Are the Teaching Unions Such Lockdown Zealots?
SPI-B, is why.
As a secondary school teacher I’ve been appalled at both my colleagues and especially the unions since the beginning of this obviously confected crisis. I don’t really know where to start but here are some highlights:
A) The sanctimoniousness of teachers as they bought in wholeheartedly and without an iota of questioning the whole “we’re all in this together” bullshit.
B) The fact that it was obvious from the beginning that children were essentially immune to the supposed threat and yet we happily deprived them of education and vital social contact with no one in the profession seemingly in the slightest bit concerned about this.
C) Microsoft fucking Teams; I’ll say no more about this but it can fuck absolutely off along with Zoom, Skype and FaceTime. If this is what the fourth industrial revolution looks like, I’m heading for the hills.
D) Masks! Tantamount to child abuse in my view. And especially infuriating has been science teachers being the most zealous despite the anti-science masks represent.
E) Testing. Tantamount to child abuse.. depressing how few parents have had the wherewithal to simply opt out.
F) Hilariously illogical one way systems and patronising wall displays about everybody keeping safe and making others safe and respecting everybody this and that
G) The unions. I have no words for these people. Well I do, it’s cunts.
In summary, schools should be the home of critical thinking. I have discovered (actually I already knew) that they are the home of mindless unquestioning rule following and vacuousness.
Thank you for this. I wish more teachers could feel confident about saying this stuff. It’s extraordinary how a few utterly ill educated and hysterical numpties have been allowed to speak for teachers and spread the lie that they’re all going to die on account of the horrifying disease vectors they have to teach. I really really hope that none of these people are teaching science subjects.
I wanted to give you an uptick for every point you made. It absolutely sickens me to see masked children walking to school every morning, knowing they have been brainwashed by the very institutions that should be educating them (in the true sense of the word) and encouraging critical and independent thinking. I have accosted a couple of teachers acting as covid Marshall’s outside the local secondary school pointing out that forcing children to wear masks and treating them as vectors of disease is abusive. The reply? “Oh they seem to be adapting to masks pretty well”. I don’t know who’s more brainwashed, the children or the teachers. I have to say, it must be horrendous for those teachers who can see through this bullshit. If I was in that position, I’d either have been fired or resigned. I’ve noticed that since I challenged the teachers, they’ve stopped hanging around on the pavement in front of the school armed with hand sanitiser and checking each child is wearing a mask. (It’s Wales so it’s still “the law”.) They don’t mind picking on kids but can’t cope with being confronted by informed adults. Despicable cowards.
Well said.
Thank you and well said. Contrary to popular belief 2020-21 seems to have brought out the worst in just about everyone. It’s painful to be working within such institutional madness and I really do feel that children have been amongst the most bullied and betrayed in all this. I have managed to opt out of everything, including masks and testing either or me or my kids and have managed to get away with it but have long sensed that it’s only a matter of time until I can’t operate in this environment any more. If schools become child vaccination centres, as I fear they will, then ill be out.
Respect and thanks to you Helen. Wish there were more like you to challenge those in authority, you would have gotten a cheer from me.
Thank you for your honesty. This backs up what three family members, in teaching, have discussed.
Nice to know other teachers out there feel the same. I have one colleague with similar views and we keep our feelings largely to ourselves and feel like aliens in hostile territory!
Crisigarden it’s good to hear this, because honestly I have come to the point of near hatred of the teaching profession of late. The utter contempt they have for kids has been staggering to witness. High school in particular, ( I have kids in high school and primary).
My oldest hates high school. She thinks teachers are mindless drones. She is an independent thinker, gives respect when it’s due, points out injustice and bullshit when she sees it, likes to be mentally challenged, ask hard questions and doesn’t follow the pack, needless to say school has always been difficult for her.
It’s good to know there are teachers out there who are likewise.
Good girl. You must be proud of her.
Completely understand where your daughter is coming from, and she’s right. Schools have become data driven exam production lines and there is no room and no time for critical thinking, expression or questioning.
Bravo , extremely well said. Thank you
Well said. There is a book on Amazon entitled “School is not for Children”. It might be worth reading.
Wrong to say teachers haven’t been teaching since March 2020. I’ve worked my ass off as a high school teacher. Everything else I agree with, the unions have behaved appallingly, ignored the plight of children and made themselves accomplices to the crime.
How about the teachers who want to teach forming a union that represents them? Or does one already exist? If so, it’s been pretty low-profile so far.
I think this is harsh on teachers, my kids teachers never missed a day and were present throughout. They wanted kids back in, we’re frustrated when they were forced to teach small classes and then had to decide not to open beyond ‘key worker’ kids and since re-opening have been great with my daughter. The unions on the other hand are a disgrace.
They’ve been an absolute fucking disgrace. I wish the teachers who are allegedly terrified of the disease vectors they teach would fuck off and get another job as far away from innocent children as possible.
Indeed.
Completely agree. I’ve had to endure the tragicomical sight of masked TAs in my classroom unable to go near the pupils they are in the room to support for fear or getting too close and barking orders at them from several meters away like deranged dystopian future cops!
Truer words never said. They are an absolute fucking disgrace, they should be grovelling in the dirt at the feet of our kids for the harms they have inflicted over the past 15 months.
I have zero respect for the profession now.
Here in Cumbria most primary schools have worked right through the pandemic, often with no PPE, no complaints, no shirking responsibility. They don’t support the union stance, they have worked hard in a dignified and responsible manner and just got on with their jobs. Bash the unions if you want to, it’s justified, but you insult many thousands of hard working professionals who have genuinely worked hard to provide the best education possible for our children, often in difficult circumstances and with unwanted restrictions imposed upon them. I also find it sad that some of you can’t write a couple of sentences without having to use the f word. I doubt you’d stand in front of the teaching staff at my wife’s school and say any of this – they’d eat you alive.
No PPE!!! It’s a school FFS!!
Maybe instead of working in a dignified manner they should have been SHOUTING from the rooftops that this was all WRONG.
But they didn’t did they?
Instead they took to it with GUSTO. Some headteachers even merrily bringing in more measures than even the Education Authorities sanctioned.
Kids in high school are still taking lateral flow tests twice weekly. FOR WHAT??? Their risk?
So get of your sanctimonious high horse and just FUCK OFF.
And I would happily discuss this with any teacher anywhere…
Eat me alive… Pathetic.
It is really sad that LS seems to be heavily populated with people prepared to attack, without real basis in fact, those who have worked hard to maintain some semblance of normality and education for many kids in the face of the government inspired fear pandemic.
Some people on here need to do some research,to find out the truth of what has been going on in schools
Some people on here have first hand experience of school policy, the way teachers have behaved towards their children, how the teaching profession have SILENTLY, without QUESTION implemented cruel, needless measures which have NOT BEEN FOR THE SAKE OF KIDS SAFETY OR WELLBEING. Kids who are not at risk of Covid and whom, it has been proven, do not spread it either (https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus-outbreak-and-kids)
So for whose benefit have all these measures been introduced..
Article 3 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
“In all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration”
Educate yourself why don’t you…
https://www.hartgroup.org/covid-policies-and-harms-to-children/
Some people on here have to face up to the ugly truth that the teaching profession as a whole have systematically, willfully and knowingly subjected children to inhumane, cruel, COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY hardships for the past 15 months and parents and children will remember this period of time FOREVER.
The teachers and TAs in the school where my OH work have gone well beyond the call of duty in the interests of the kids in their care, to the point of inviting in kids who didn’t meet the strict criteria of key workers’ children , for example.
This doesn’t fit with your experience, but it is true nonetheless.
t
Well beyond the call of duty in the interests of the kids in their care….
So that being the case explain to me these findings..
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-publishes-new-research-on-the-impact-of-covid-19-partial-school-closure/#closeSignup
This paper focuses on the gap in attainment likely caused by March 2020 school closures (commonly called ‘learning loss’), and the disadvantage gap for Year 2 children as measured in autumn 2020.
The findings suggest that primary-age pupils have significantly lower achievement in both reading and maths as a likely result of missed learning. In addition, there is a large and concerning attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and non-disadvantaged pupils.
This study is one of the first to provide robust insights into the extent of learning loss that might have occurred as a result of partial school closures. It is based on data collected by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) from assessments in reading and maths taken in November 2020 by more than 5,900 Year 2 (6 / 7 year olds) pupils in 168 representative primary schools. These were compared with tests taken by Year 2 pupils in autumn 2017, also from a representative sample of schools.
Overall performance in both reading and mathematics in autumn 2020 was found to be significantly lower compared to the 2017 cohort, with pupils, on average, making two months less progress in both subject areas compared to the standardisation sample. Worryingly, the study finds that “a very large number of pupils were unable to engage effectively with the tests”.
The study also finds a large and concerning gap between the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and non-disadvantaged pupils. For both reading and maths this gap is estimated to be the equivalent of seven months’ learning.
Yep they are doing a great job…
Or this..
https://www.google.com/amp/s/schoolsweek.co.uk/the-cost-of-lockdown-attainment-gap-widens-by-up-to-52-for-primary-pupils/amp/
The attainment gap between primary pupils has widened by up 52 per cent during school closures, the first data published on lockdown learning losses has suggested.
And what about the impact on their wellbeing…
https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/new-evidence-shows-how-school-closures-hit-childrens-mental-health-hard
Taken together, our results suggest that the effects of school closures on children’s wellbeing are large, and that they may take some time to mend. Going back to school in itself does not appear to be sufficient for children to ‘bounce back’.
Yes. There is a pandemic going on , and schools are working in unprecedented situations, learning how to offer a different kind of learning under government in rules, which includes many students being excluded from face to face teaching,and having in very many cases and certainly in primary schools, effectively double their preparation workload.
probably best to ignore that sort of thing, in case it gets in the way of your anger.
Many teachers, who you so casually lambast as a homogenous group., have been against the damaging stay- at – home measures,as well as the more outrageous demands of their unions and have worked in very tough conditions through this winter. But again, you probably dont want to hear this.
I’m sorry Toby but you just don’t seem to want to join up the dots here.
All the senior and influential members of the “education” establishment, thinkers, unions, policy activists, think tanks are fully indoctrinated with the common purpose/sustainable cities&communities UN agenda.
Don’t believe it ? Go and research the affiliations of any one of those individuals.
You, and anyone else who wants to save what’s left of our heritage and what “we” would consider normal MUST wake up to the facts.
we are undergoing a seismic transformation, the Bolsheviks are taking over.
This is a global coup by internationalist Marxists , this is the revolution they have been waiting for. This is why the Left has been so silent, and the foot soldiers who indoctrinate society from the classroom believe they will endure and lead us to the great enlightened future.
Well I’ve got bad news for them, as Yuri Bezmenov said the useful idiots and intellectuals will be first against the wall.
oh by the way, looks like some backsliding by fatso on the lockdown release …
bwahhhhhh ha ha ha .. who could have seen that coming ?
The focus on disrupting, degrading, and destroying Western youth is because one of their main goals is rendering the West internationally non-competitive going forward.
What better way to do that than going after the youth from 0 to about 25 years of age?
Why else have this well-funded, high-level lunatic push to turn young girls and women into boys and men and vice versa for the young men and boys?
As much as I can see the damage of not being at school. Unions represent their members. It’s like saying Fishing Unions should represent fish! The Unions are a collective of people who just like the majority have been swept up and taken along by the fear instilled by the government and mainstream media. Don’t get me wrong I’m a counsellor and have many clients of school age for whom this Lockdown has caused the most awful anxiety about going back to school. But it seems every adult in their lives has been complicit and happy to sacrifice their children in this way.
Asking why teachers are in favour of a policy that pays them to sit at home watching Netflix with a box of Roses is like Mrs. Merton asking Paul Daniels widow: “So, Debbie: what first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?”
As said – you need to get out a bit more if you think that teachers in general are ‘in favour. They aren’t. Your sentence is virtue-signalling based on fiction.
Out of the whole lockdown shit show, this is the one that gets me the most. I will never, ever forgive the Teachers Unions for what they have forced and continue to force onto our children.
Children are damaged and it didn’t have to be this way. They can hide their heads in sand as much as they like, but they know that they have fucked up royally.
Teachers gloried in being called “frontline workers’ when they all hid at home on full pay.
They forced little children to sit in isolation, but called them ‘bubbles’ well because that sounds nice.
They got out their rulers to measure the distance between desks. They deemed it unsafe FOR THEM to get too close to our children.
They stopped all singing, groupwork, assemblies, basically anything that might have given a little bit of sunlight to a child’s day. They cordoned off playgrounds and put lines and arrows all over school buildings. They put up posters reminding children to be afraid.
They view our kids as vectors of disease and force them to wear facemasks for hours on end. (Yes this travesty continues in Scotland)
They shouted loudly we must get the vaccine before everyone else or your kids can’t come back to school.
They fucked up exams causing months of untold misery, anxiety and uncertainty for kids and their families.
They lied, we are providing quality online learning, when parents had to spend months and months trying their best to maintain their kids education and mental well being.
They hid their faces behind masks and closed school buildings off to families. Forcing parents to wear masks in the open air when collecting their children.
They tell us that they do this always with the child as their central focus and always in the children’s best interest.
They are a bunch of liars and a complete disgrace.
I can hear your anger and completely agree with you.
100% agree – I could explain how one of my children – not enjoying degree life but sticking at it with great courage – found out in the year pre CV19 that her final year was blighted by Uni lecturers who went on strike with one such event timed to coincide with a crucial week of contact time for the final work to finish dissertations – this was all about the cost of their final salary scheme , among other things, rising – these wankers objected to this and had the crass effin gall to say to their students that they were striking for the benefit of ……their students. I cannot find the words to express what I feel about these idiots – some of their “peers” world crass (sic) performance during CV19 has not altered my feeling one iota but the several times postponed graduation has thwarted me from confronting these shit individuals – but I will do so in time.
It won’t be long before Sky Sports hosts a new competition – the UK National Teacher Bashing Championships. With Toby Young as the guest commentator. I’m a strong supporter of the Lockdown Sceptics movement and greatly value the input of Toby and his companions. However, the anti-teacher stance I have seen so often here is out of place. I can only speak with direct experience of primary schools, and only here in Cumbria and I accept the national picture may be different. Our local primary schools have generally been open throughout the whole period of the pandemic, looking after key worker children, providing on-line learning and getting as many children into school as they have been able to at different times. They have done so with dignity and without making a fuss. Many of the teachers I know have been appalled at the stance of the unions and have been quick to point out that the teaching unions are not representing their views. Bash the unions if you like, but don’t think for one second that they are representing the views of many teachers.
Teachers are complicit in their silence.
End of.
I think this comment is absolutely spot on from my (second hand ) experience of the same sector. ( OH and some friends work in the Primary sector)
‘Worth reading in full‘
No it’s not. too many wrong assumptions like :
“At all times they have acted in the interests of their dues-paying members rather than the children”
No they haven’t – this shit-show has not made the life of teachers in general easier. If you think that, you need to get out more in order to do some proper research (admittedly a scarce commodity in Covid Britain, and physically difficult to do).
What is true is that teachers have, like most of the population, been scared witless (literally) by the propaganda. Most don’t take much notice of union elections (see ‘democracy in the UK’), which has allowed a coterie of non-representatives to take them over.
Talking with some of my generation who taught and were also involved with the predecessor unions from 30 years ago, they are actually horrified at what has become of those unions under the leadership of those who have taken the opportunity to play on the fear agenda.
Teachers are ‘guilty’ in the same way as parents can be so accused – a vast, meaningless generalixation.
The parallel is the takeover of the Tory and Labour parties by the venal and stupid.
My child’s junior school introduced half day Fridays upon return. They claimed they needed to take off the pressure of the need for cleaning so they can prepare for the following week. It was meant to be until May but they did a parent survey and the majority wanted to keep it until 21 June.
Why teach horrid pupils in horrid schools when they can be paid to sit at home in their pyjamas?
Comment withdrawn
As a Branch secretary of a union I think that the behaviour of teaching unions and the TUC is a total disgrace and they should hang their heads in shame for the disruption of teaching and the muzzling of children. They have lost the facts of how to do a sensible risk assessment believing the politicians lies. Some have done their duty but many have not. They don’t deserve a pay rise. Likewise the MPs should have a 50% pay cut.