A study by UCL Institute of Education (IOE) suggests that children in the UK are spending an average of 2.5 hours a day doing homework while in lockdown. The study used data from an online survey of 4,559 children from households throughout the UK in the last two weeks of April. It reveals that one fifth of pupils, the equivalent of two million children in the UK, did no schoolwork at home, or less than…
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This week the UK government has announced a £1 billion package to help pupils catch up on teaching missed during the coronavirus lockdown. The “Covid catch-up plan” will include £350m to pay for a tutoring scheme for the most disadvantaged pupils as well as £650m to be shared across state primary and secondary schools during the next academic year. Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “This package will make sure that every young person, no matter their age or…
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Reading has considerable benefits for children’s emotional and social development, but many families will be struggling to keep up with reading routines during the coronavirus pandemic. Video-call shared reading (VCSR) has increasingly become a way for children to be read to during lockdown while families are forced apart and nurseries and schools are shut. Through their experience of observing and participating in VCSR, Professors Natalia Kucirkova and Trude Hoel from the University of Stavanger, Norway, have pulled…
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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised a “guaranteed” apprenticeship for every young person whose job prospects have been damaged by coronavirus. Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, the Prime Minister said there will be “many, many” job losses as a result of lockdown and acknowledged that the risk of prolonged unemployment is higher for young people. He said that ministers would take an “interventionist” approach to supporting jobs and that apprenticeships would be vital…
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Primary schools in England returned this week, but levels of attendance are ranging from 40% to 70% as some schools remain closed and many parents are choosing not to send their children back. This was reflected in a survey from the National Foundation for Educational Research that suggested almost 50% of children would be kept at home by parents. The situation in primary schools is very mixed across the country as some local authorities are…
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Kindness was a key theme of last week’s Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK and continues to be important during the coronavirus pandemic. Kindness is defined as “doing something towards yourself and others, motivated by genuine desire to make a positive difference” and is believed to be a central aspect of good mental health. Over the past few months, local communities and frontline workers around the world have shown incredible acts of kindness and…
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A study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the UCL Institute of Education has found that mothers are one and half times more likely to have left or lost their job or been furloughed than fathers. The research focused on opposite-gender, dual-parent households with dependent children in England, using data collected since the end of April. It found that amongst parents who are no longer in paid work, 16% of mothers have lost…
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The University of Cambridge has curated a selection of online resources and activities to help children learn at home. The wide range of activities have been pulled together by The Cambridge Museums, the Botanic Gardens, the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University and non-school institutions and initiatives such as the Millennium Maths Project. With museums closed many including the Fitzwilliam Museum, The Polar Museum and the Museum of Zoology are replacing their family programmes with…
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Thirty organisations have written to the prime minister calling for a five-point recovery plan to help reduce the long-term impact of coronavirus on the mental health of young people – “both now and in the future”.  The letter is signed by Young Minds, Barnardo’s, Place2Be and Beat, as well as teacher unions and medical groups such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. It calls for a…
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Nine unions, including the National Education Union and the National Association of Headteachers, who represent hundreds of thousands of education practitioners in the UK have warned that the government has a “lack of understanding” about the dangers of coronavirus spreading within the school setting and wider community. School leaders believe that 1st June is too early for schools to re-open and have urged the government to step back from plans, saying that they were not consulted…
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