Back to school first step back to normal for our children

The mental health toll of the pandemic on the young may not be fully known for years.

Sennen Bond after her first vaccine shot at Balgowlah in Sydney this week. Picture: Getty Images

The new year was filled with such promise. As schoolchildren were finally allowed back in the classroom in term four of 2021 (well after adults could get a beer at their local pub), parents everywhere could see the hope of a smoother ride in 2022. Delta cases were low, adult vaccinations were high and mums and dads were hanging up their home-schooling hats hopefully for good. Omicron had other plans.

As a mental health professional at the coalface working with children, the rise in parental anxiety as the new school year approaches is palpable. Concerned looks in my consulting room as parents adjust their masks, urging me to confirm that NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet won’t back down on his commitment to return children to school in week one. For almost two years now global reports have made two things abundantly clear. The first is that the Covid-19 virus mercifully spares our children from the serious health impacts that strike older adults.

Secondly, one of the biggest lessons of 2021 surely has to be that the impact of lockdowns and school closures on children has mounted to a mental health and educational disaster.

At the height of the 2021 lockdowns The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported more children were using crisis lines such as Kids Help Line and other mental health services since the crisis began, while there was also a significant increase in hospital attendances for suicidal thoughts and self-harm in NSW and Victoria. Anecdotally, the levels of panic and anxiety in children around the climate debate that I witnessed previously has morphed and been engulfed by a profound sense of hopelessness, helplessness and disconnection.

The Teachers Federation is already starting to make calls for the 2021 school year to be delayed and a return to remote learning to occur. While the Omicron variant is more infectious, it is also milder, with many children asymptomatic while testing positive. Indeed, infectious disease clinicians such as paediatrician Professor Robert Booy have commented that due to the mild presentation of Omicron in children, it is likely there are up to 3-4 times as many cases than being reported, and many children will return to the school year with natural immunity.

Covid-19 is a fast-moving beast and our cost-benefit analysis must adapt with it. This is not the same climate that faced the Berejiklian government in NSW when it chose to close schools in mid-2021. Nearly 80 per cent of high school students are now fully vaccinated, and our younger primary school children are now on their way to joining them. This is in the face of a recognised milder variant, and a policy redirection away from Covid zero. Looking abroad, we have the advantage of observing the impact in Britain and other European countries of keeping their classrooms open. Vaccinations, ventilation, masks and frequent use of rapid antigen tests all make up the arsenal that keeps their kids in school. The biggest hurdle facing education departments for the upcoming term will be the expected high rates of absenteeism in both staff and teachers.

This will require large degrees of flexibility, of planning and an ability to make changes on the run. One could argue this is no different to what any other workplace has faced during the pandemic and to treat teachers as wallflowers who are not capable of this is insulting.

Strategies will be required, such as combining students into mixed groups resulting in supervised attendance at school only, rather than an engagement in the curriculum. I would argue that even with minimal academic work achieved, the benefits of maintaining the daily routine of school attendance and social interaction far outweigh the cost of possibly Covid-19 exposure.

After all, anyone who believes that what occurred in most homes during the lockdowns of 2021 was “home-schooling” is fooling themselves. The children I see are over it, have admitted to barely engaging while trying to learn from home, and are pleading to return to their friends and teachers.

With many Australian schoolchildren missing up to half of their face-to-face teaching hours over the past two years, and 3700 children in NSW not even returning to the classroom after the first lockdowns of 2020, surely we are looking at a large-scale impact of children not achieving their potential. An impact that will disproportionately fall on disadvantaged students and further exacerbate a socio-economic divide. Moreover, this is the struggle of the neurotypical-average child without even considering the plight of the many children with learning or behavioural difficulties.

Our children have been the sacrificial lamb of the pandemic. They have carried the load and have already absorbed the brunt of pain and suffering to protect our older generations.

The biggest shift is that Omicron is now out in the community, never to be put back into the box. This blow to our nation’s attempt to keep Covid-19 at bay may in fact be the green light that our young people deserve to return to semi-normality.

Clare Rowe is a Sydney-based child and adolescent psychologist