School starters born during pandemic lack communication skills, Ofsted says

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/oct/08/school-starters-pandemic-lack-communication-skills-ofsted

Posted by Fox_9810

15 Comments

  1. Unfair-Link-3366 on

    Babe wake up, new excuse for shit parenting just dropped

    Question: if the pandemic is to blame for these kids’ communication skills, what about all those that ended up fine?

    Perhaps it’s not the pandemic then?

    Also it’ll be a cold day in hell before I trust Ofsted, the same organisation that pushed a teacher to suicide

  2. Lopsided_Rush3935 on

    In order to qualify as this target sample, you’d have to be born in the first half of 2020, right? Otherwise you’d be too young for school right now. Any earlier and you wouldn’t classify as a pandemic birth.

    Idk. That seems like too early to make a judgement. They would have only been going to school for just over a month now.

    Edit: This makes even less sense. The report was based on data collected in late 2023? If you were born during the pandemic, you wouldn’t be in school in 2023.

    I think, at times, people actively want to talk about the pandemic and begin seeing it’s effects in everything even if it really isn’t overwhelmingly there. But you can’t use the pandemic to explain everything forever.

  3. The pandemic and lockdowns have negatively affected most kids.

    Some more than others.

    The decision to close schools unnecessarily had a huge impact.

  4. Thats_a_BaD_LiMe on

    If they were BORN during the pandemic it would have zero effect on their communication skills. They wouldn’t have been learning anything about communication beyond seeing their parents/immediate family during that time anyway. And if anything their parents were all at home, interacting with them more.

  5. Utter crap. I have three children. Two pre pandemic and one early Feb 2020. Apart from the lack of any evidence to back this report it is not played out in reality. My youngest is in a class indistinguishable from others. No one at any education setting I’m involved with has noticed any difference either.

  6. Covid just continues to be the most convenient excuse for way too many issues because it excuses parents from responsibility. The lockdowns simply just exasperated the problems that already persisted. This is not a Covid derived problem but one that is based in poor or ineffective parenting. I think the same applies to the rising numbers of adhd/ anxiety diagnoses. It’s hardly surprising that children develop poor communication and coping skills if their comfort zone is behind a screen.

  7. It’s interesting to see that the most upvoted comments here are the ones challenging expert opinions.

    Weren’t we supposed to trust the experts? Or does that only apply when they say ‘lockdown good’?

  8. JeffyLikesApple on

    My son was born October 2017, so he was 3 when the pandemic hit. I know it’s very anecdotal, but his class is apparently the most challenging class the school has ever had. So many kids in his class are SEN. Bet most them kids were left with electronic devices throughout the pandemic, which between ages 2-3, isnt great for their development. 

  9. nightsofthesunkissed on

    These threads tend to devolve into classism, blaming parents, and petty arguments about lockdown (“oh I suppose you had a better solution!?”) nonsense.

    I just feel for those kids and their parents.

  10. I’ll pay attention if teachers and school staff start saying this.

    OFSTED don’t know shit.

  11. Rubber_duck_man on

    Obviously I know this is a generalisation across all children born in that period but my daughter, born in that period, is an absolute chatterbox with considerable social skills and zero fear of talking to complete strangers (that last one maybe not the greatest thing).

  12. ‘During pandemic’ aka during lockdown. Looking forward to the day we can say the forbidden word instead of dancing around the fact that *policy* caused this, not covid.