Isolated and stressed: UQ study shows home learning a battle for kids

Kids felt isolated, stress and wanted to drop out of school during months of home learning, new research has found. Here’s what they had to say.

Queensland students felt isolated, stressed and wanted to give up on school altogether during remote learning, alarming new research has found.

University of Queensland’s Learning through COVID-19 project has revealed kids’ first-hand accounts of what 2020’s home schooling was really like, with shocking stories of students feeling they were “locked in a cage” and scared of leaving the house.

UQ’s Institute for Social Sciences Research director Mark Western said the report showed the ramifications of online learning “were not simple and straightforward”

“We’ve never had an event like COVID-19 that has disrupted education in quite the way that it has,” he said.

“We found a lot of students experienced anxiety and stress, and they also picked up that they were losing their connections with their teachers and their peers.”

One male high school student told researchers home schooling “felt bad”.

“It felt like this cage, you were in it, you can’t go out from it,” he said.

“I wanted to go out and you can’t go out. And if you go out it’s dangerous.”

Many children felt isolated and stressed during home learning last year. Picture: iStock

Another female student described losing touch with their friends, and feeling “quite lonely” without the social interaction of their peers.

“In all honesty, I just gave up on it because it was just so stressful and I was just getting so worked up over it and overwhelmed,” another high school student said.

But others found silver linings, with some students reporting a decrease in bullying and social anxiety, or relishing the chance to learn autonomously.

Professor Western said a number of students in the study were from disadvantaged backgrounds with difficult life circumstances, and the research demonstrated their resilience in the face of such a disruption.

“For some of these young people, school was a very safe place to be,” he said.

“COVID-19 was just one of yet another difficult thing they had to confront in their daily lives – something else they had to adapt to and had to deal with.”

One female student told researchers she “loved having online school”, and experienced a panic attack when she had to return to the classroom.

“What it does suggest, is that high-quality teaching is really targeted towards the needs of individual students,” Professor Western said.

The University of Queensland’s Learning through COVID-19 project has revealed kids’ first-hand accounts of what 2020’s home schooling was really like.

Here’s what some of them had to say:

“I felt bad. It felt like this cage, you were in it, you can’t go out from it. I wanted to go out and you can’t go out. And if you go out it’s dangerous.”

***

“It was quite scary … the beginning of the COVID-19 thing. People were unsure and it was quite scary. You go to school and then you see most of your colleagues or friends not coming to school and you wonder whether they’re okay or whether – you think about the seriousness of whatever is making them not to come to school.”

***

“I talked to some of my friends over the phone (during lockdown), but then everyone kind of just lost touch due to COVID and so forth, because you couldn’t do anything anyway. I, myself, am a very social person and I get quite lonely when I’m not out socialising with people.”

***

“I feel like COVID kind of just ruined that part (of starting Grade 8) because half of it was in Zoom and stuff like that. It took away much of the fun stuff. We could have gone on beach days or some type of stuff like excursions or hanging out with friends in school. It took away that time because we were all at home and we couldn’t go anywhere.”

***

I’m thinking of getting a job and then like getting myself into a TAFE course. Before the pandemic, I really wanted to be an author because I had a big imagination so like why not just write them down? But after COVID, it’s just – I don’t know. Like killed the motivation.”

***

“It made me a bit sad because I can’t see my friends or my teachers and I can’t do everything at school. Because there’s art class, there’s library, there’s the pool, and I don’t get to do all that stuff at home.”

***

“COVID was actually great for me. I loved having online school. It actually like – when we went back to school, I actually had like a panic attack because I was like, ‘I don’t want to go back to school and deal with these people in real life’ because online is so much better because a lot of people can’t join, so the people that like – the people that like get on my nerves or make me anxious, like they’re not there so it’s like so chill and like the chill people are online, so it’s like really good.”

***

“I just couldn’t wait to come back to school. I even emailed my teachers and I told them, ‘I really need to come back to school because I’m way behind’. It was also good to see my friends again each day. It felt so good. Finally, I get to breathe fresh air. It was awesome. I just jumped up and down. And I saw my friends. Even though they said ‘social distancing’ I did not distance.”

***

“I understand now how like lucky I am to come to school and, you know, be with my friends.”

***

“But I don’t know why, I just feel I’m not motivated to do it. No motivation to do it. Because you just wake up and you know about tomorrow that you can’t go out. It’s just the issues, just you’re sad because you’ve got to stick around your room, your house all day. We couldn’t go out, outside. I think it sucks.”

***

“I feel more motivated when there’s people studying around me and there’s a teacher actually telling me what to do and watching you and stuff. But that wasn’t the case at home. I would just sit there and read. End up doing something else that’s not even part of the study.”

***

“I would probably do like an hour of work and then I’d get unmotivated and then I think it’s the fact that being at home and didn’t really have to have it done at a certain time, I’d end up doing it at night.”

***

“Sometimes in maths class when I don’t really get it. I just put up the computer on mute and I don’t really listen. Just turn the volume down and I really don’t listen. If I just try listening, then I don’t really get anything. Things like my brothers, they get really annoying as well. When they are finished their classes they just run around the house and I can’t really focus.”

***

“But during online school, it’s only me in the room. I can do anything I want. But there’s a lot of distraction and I can’t stay focused. And no one’s telling me to put my phone away. And the class, I don’t pay much attention during online class. You can get distraction. Because going to Zoom meetings, you don’t have to open camera. So I tell my friends, other students, just to turn it on for attendance and then turn the camera off to go back to sleep.”

***

“In all honesty, I just gave up on it because it was just so stressful and I was just getting so worked up over it and overwhelmed. Because the whole thing, I just would just be like, Yeah, nah, I’m not doing it.”

***

“I’m a bit behind at homework and library. It’s making me feel good when I catch up to all the other people. But it doesn’t feel good when I get left behind.”

***

“It was just confusing because they were doing way ahead of me then most people got to school before me, so they were doing, well, similar to at school, so they were getting through it all because they had better help.”

***

“I couldn’t really catch up with the classes, because I missed a few. Because of the Wi-Fi I couldn’t really access to the online learning, online content, material stuff, and then I was behind.”

***

“My grades weren’t that good during the lockdown because I procrastinated a lot. So it would build-up and I wouldn’t do the work, so marks would be worse. I didn’t really care about that that much, about the marks and stuff. That’s a normal thing for me. But when it’s in school I do more work because you have to.”

***

“I still have homeworks behind from last term or during the COVID-19. But I’m still working on them to finish them off to get my mark high to get passed for my course, my subject.”

***

“So all the support networks simply really disappeared, you can’t just go up to a teacher and say, ‘Okay, I really don’t understand what this one will I answer – show me’ and the teacher will help you out immediately.”

***

“I was a bit behind and I have to ask more questions. The teacher helped me a lot though. I wanted more help, like from teachers at lunch. There were a lot of students that needed help, so they couldn’t support me all the time.”

***

“It was extremely hard to come back and do a full day at school, so we came around an idea to do half days. And then we would slowly graduate back up to the full day. And now I’m doing full days back at school. But definitely doing the half day was definitely a big, massive help for me. It was probably the best support that I was probably given during that time, was the support of knowing that I am going to still get the same help as everyone else.”