Category: Covid19

What do children need to flourish? Lessons learned from children’s experiences of schooling during lockdown

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Dr Wendy Martineau (Teaching Associate, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies) and Dr Ioanna Bakopoulou (Senior Lecturer in Psychology in Education, School of Education)

We are delighted to see the publication of our article, What children need to flourish: Insights from a qualitative study of children’s mental health and wellbeing in the pandemic. This forms part of a collection of articles in a Special Issue of Education 3-13, which draw on educational research during the pandemic for the project of reimagining primary school education in the post pandemic world.

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Creative methods unlocked my lockdown research

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

By Sarah McLaughlin, BA(Hons), MSC. PGCE, School of Education, University of Bristol (Doctorate in Education student)

I commenced my Doctorate in Education journey in September 2018 – pre Covid! Little did I know that a pandemic would join me along the way and threaten to hinder my research.

When Covid rules put a halt on face-to-face data collection, I had big decisions to make. Should I wait it out until restrictions lift? After all, this would blow over after a few months, right?! Or do I change my methods? I needed to find a way of giving my participants a voice and allowing them to tell me their stories and reflections so that I could ask questions and understand how they constructed their return to education as mature students. (more…)

Summer 2021 education document summaries: SEND, Covid-19, curriculum and more

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog by Helen Aberdeen, School of Education, University of Bristol

As the academic year draws to a close and school colleagues look forward to a well-earned (and desperately needed!) break, time to take a look back over the last 6 months in education through the lens of the Document Summary Service (to be known from September as the Education Policy and Research Service).

So…here are the Top Ten of most downloaded summaries: (more…)

Salma’s story: What is it like to conduct doctoral research during a pandemic?

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog post by Salma Al Saifi, doctoral researcher at the School of Education, University of Bristol

The spread of the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 with all the strict measures and restrictions applied to minimize its impact on people’s lives have posed a serious challenge to the conduct of my research project. For instance, conducting fieldwork such as interviews and classroom observations during such circumstances was problematic and challenging for me. (more…)

The effects of Covid-19 on pre-existing inequalities in the UK

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog by Jáfia Naftali Câmara Doctoral Researcher, School of Education, University of Bristol

The Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted not only lifestyle and work, but also how people access education and learning. The effects of Covid-19 on education have accentuated the inequalities already embedded within the UK’s education system and demonstrated the relationships between deep-rooted educational, systemic and economic inequalities.

Disadvantaged students, including refugees and asylum seekers living in Britain, face many barriers such as digital exclusion and food poverty. Poor immigrant children are also affected by immigration laws and procedures that exclude them from accessing vital services and support. In response to the effects of Covid-19, the UK government’s policy interventions have made centralised decisions enabling for profitable opportunities for education businesses and unsatisfactory support services for disadvantaged communities. (more…)

We need an evidence-based expert approach to the post-pandemic recovery of young people

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog post by Patricia Broadfoot, University of Bristol; Roger Murphy, University of Nottingham

In December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational experiences and progress. Two months later the Department for Education (DfE) announced that plans for this group had been scrapped. Instead, the DfE has appointed an education recovery commissioner to focus on so-called ‘learning loss’. Two successive children’s commissioners, the head of Ofsted and many others have expressed serious concerns about the current situation. There has also been widespread disagreement about the best strategies to employ and the resources required.

We need the best possible expertise to identify the issues that must be addressed if children are to flourish. We need experts to provide an integrated picture of the challenges that children face, and to suggest appropriate ways of addressing them. Without such expertise children could suffer lifelong impacts, as argued by two children’s commissioners and in a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Sibieta, 2021). That report drew the following conclusions, which reflect our key concerns.

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COVID-19, education and the immediate policy response

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Post written by Victoria Bowen, PhD Researcher in Education, University of Bristol.

On 12th March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to be a pandemic.  What followed this announcement was to become the largest global disruption to education in history.  1.6 billion learners in 190 countries were affected, as nations implemented regional lockdowns and school closures to curtail the spread of COVID-19 (UN, 2020).  Since then, as the virus circulated widely in society across the globe, school closures have been implemented nationally, regionally, locally, and reactively based on infection rates.  This article follows on from my presentation on ‘COVID-19, school closures and inequality’ at the TLC roundtable event (March 2021).  It summarises the immediate education policy response relating to COVID-19 in English schools. (more…)

‘The significant return to normality’: Back to school in England, but who is missing?

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Blog post by Lucy Wenham, University of Bristol  Iqra Din, School of Education, University of Bristol  Liam Eaves, School of Education, University of Bristol

As part of the gradual lifting of lockdown measures in England, following the ‘second wave’ of the Covid-19 pandemic here, schools reopened wholesale on the 8 March 2021. For many parents and their children, the return to a semblance of educational normality is accompanied by a sigh of relief.

Our research (EBI, 2020), which is currently exploring the experience of 65 families resisting the return to school and is drawn from reflective surveys and interviews, indicates that this sense of relief is far from universal. Indeed, for some parents, the expectation that all children will return to school is not only unwelcome, it also brings deep unease, pressure and worry. Over 1 billion students have been out of school as a result of similar national school closures across 134 countries over the past year (UNICEF, 2020). As schools reopen, similar concerns are likely to resonate across the globe. (more…)

Mental health during a global pandemic

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Claire Plews, EdD student, School of Education, University of BristolBlog post by Claire Plews, EdD Student, School of Education, University of Bristol.

Claire is an EdD student at the School of Education, interested in researching the experiences of counselling students in HE training.  She is a HE lecturer for a counselling degree training programme in the UK, has worked in mental health for 20 years and is interested in the use of compassion and mindfulness in therapy. 

To be betwixt and between a global pandemic and ‘normal’ life undoubtedly has the potential to greatly impact on daily life and our mental health.

How interesting and difficult it has been to observe the mental health journey of others whilst navigating my own during this last year!  Most of us have been coerced into a period of self-reflection on what does and does not help us keep mentally well and coping. It has been the best of times and the worst of times and the end is not in sight just yet.

Here are a few themes that have come out of my observations of working with clients, students and my own research and experiences this year and a suggestion of what we can do to help our mental health during the pandemic. (more…)

COVID-19 school closures are threatening children’s oral language skills: but whole-school based interventions could help

Posted on by Lucy Backwell

Dr Ioanna BakopoulouOral language skills are critical for learning, and they matter now more than ever, writes Dr Ioanna Bakopoulou, SoE, University of Bristol

Capabilities such as vocabulary knowledge, narrative skills and active listening are foundational for young children’s learning. Developed both at home and in school, these capabilities are known as oral language. Oral language is essential for young children’s learning, in particularly their literacy development and their ability to access the curriculum.

Oral language skills have always mattered, but they matter now more than ever. (more…)