School closures during covid 'negatively impacted' children's social development, say parents
Parents overwhelmingly feel that their children have suffered socially from schools closing amid the covid-19 pandemic, while students also think it harmed their social development and education.Released to mark the fifth anniversary of the announcement that all schools, colleges and creches would shut, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said this would be the first in a series exploring the social and economic impact of covid-19 five years on.“Seven in 10 (71%) parents feel the social development of at least one of their children has been negatively impacted by the periodic closures of early childcare and education facilities when covid-19 restrictions were in place,” CSO statistician Claire Burke said.“A similar proportion (68%) has a child whose education and learning has been negatively impacted.” Parents of children attending a special school in early 2020 were the most likely to feel that their child was negatively impacted by school closures, with 82% saying they believed it harmed their child’s social development.Furthermore, parents who said they were in a bad financial situation (80%) were more likely to believe their child’s social development and learning had taken a hit by school closures compared to more well-off parents (62%).At primary and secondary level, mothers and fathers were as likely to say that school closures had a negative impact on their child. However, at third-level, mothers were more likely to believe that college closures negatively impacted their child’s social development — with nearly three-quarters (74%) of mothers compared to just 64% of fathers. Furthermore, almost two in five parents (38%) said they believed that the closure of third-level institutions had a negative impact on their child’s future career prospects.From the student’s side, three quarters of respondents (76%) who were in secondary school when covid-19 restrictions came into effect said it negatively impacted both their social development and their education.For those who were in third-level at the time, a lower proportion felt that it affected their education and learning at 64% but 71% said it affected their social development. Just one in five (19%) said the college closures had a positive impact on their education.Women were more likely than men to say that the closure of colleges impacted them negatively.
Students were less pessimistic, meanwhile, on the impact of college closures on their future prospects than their parents were with just 29% saying it would be negatively impacted. Around one in six (16%) of young people said that the closures may have actually benefitted their future career prospects.This survey follows a recent report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) that school attendance, engagement and student wellbeing have all worsened since the onset of the pandemic.In the ESRI report, it spoke to a range of co-ordinators running the School Completion Programme which supports students at risk of disengaging from school. They said the pandemic has dramatically worsened student attendance, wellbeing, and engagement, and high levels of poverty, mental health issues and addiction are prevalent in many communities it works with.
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