Regrets, we have a few: Looking back at school lockdowns

Herald readers responded strongly to a series of stories this week looking at the effect of lockdown-related school closures on the mental and emotional health of students. In NSW, more than 1.2 million students either learnt remotely or had minimal supervision in the school classroom for more than five months in 2020/21.

Jordan Baker and Lucy Carroll interviewed a series of education experts who said that the pandemic closures were unnecessary and led to a cascade of social and educational problems for a generation of Australian children.

Post COVID-19 lockdowns, some children are finding it hard to leave their rooms.Credit: John Shakespeare

Was it worth it?

• NSW families suffered greatly under lockdowns as overstretched parents had to work from home while also trying to home-school their students. But two years on, how are those students coping?

andreaedwards It was a traumatic time to many with lockdowns completely destroying family life. The government is trying to move on, forget about it. However, how is the next pandemic going to be handled if this is not properly explored and looked at?

doobiedan I am a current secondary teacher with over 30 years of experience. If the schools didn’t close during the peak of COVID I simply would have resigned. So would many of my colleagues in their 50s and 60s.

Peter Miniutti, Ashbury There were so many things that state and federal governments did poorly during COVID, including the closure of schools. The thing to remember is that there was no instruction booklet on how to deal with this pandemic, so decisions were made hastily to keep people safe.

Allan Gibson, Cherrybrook The commentary simply confirms my long-held view that prolonged school lockdowns would lead to a generation deprived of social cohesion, and the disciplined education vital to growth and learning. The lessons from COVID-19 should not be passed off as yet another brick in the wall, rather they are lessons never too late for the learning.

Asking the hard questions

• Two years on, have our political leaders adequately studied the lessons of the pandemic and learnt from them in anticipation of the next one, asked the Herald’s editorial.

Matt From a teacher’s point of view, what COVID school closures exposed was just how little many parents care about their children’s education. We sent homework, we sent home instructions, we did Zoom meetings, we used Google Classroom, we rang home, we sent emails ...and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Yet large numbers of students took it as a 6-week bonus holiday and did nothing -all with their parents’ direct approval or the signal from their apathy.

School’s out: Many educational facilities were deserted during the pandemic.Credit: Getty

patrobo As a teacher in my 60s with health issues, I would not have been prepared to return to the classroom and face the risks that were associated with the pandemic. I had my first vaccination about one week before the long lockdown in 2021. It was not until follow-up vaccinations that I started to feel any confidence about socialising again. It is too easy to forget the fear and uncertainty associated with this pandemic, especially for people who were potentially at risk of serious illness or death.

HHH UK schools were closed too, for a lot longer than ours. Scotland was particularly heavy-handed. The horror stories I could tell you from my friend who is a school social worker over there! So it would seem school closures did nothing to stem the tide of Covid, here or there.

Traumatised children may take years to recover

The Herald convened experts on education and child social development to assess the impact of COVID on students.Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong

• The COVID generation is badly affected, with violent behaviour and anxiety being displayed in students as young as 5.

centaur One interpretation might be that the pandemic response exposed pre-existing problems rather than caused them. Why is the mental health and attitude to school so fragile in so many children? Are we raising kids poorly armed to respond to crises? We need to know because there will be more crises, pandemics or other, to come.

Rachael Davies I also work in a school and have noticed some children really struggling after we returned from lockdown. The children with the most problems are usually neurodiverse as per the article. I really hope next time around they keep schools open, albeit with infection control. Face-to-face teaching is much better and the home would have been a stressful environment with everyone under the same roof and parents having to work from home while also schooling the kids. We all know Zoom education was basically rubbish too.

rhubarbfriand We should openly discuss the consequences. I supported lockdowns pre-vax but the toll it took on my young family was real. These children experienced an abnormal lack of social development. Parents trying to work and teach was fraught, and it is OK to have that conversation.

• You can join the conversation at smh.com.au in the comments sections of each article and in letters to the editor in print and online. Have a great week.

  Yours. Sincerely,
  Margot Saville, deputy letters editor