Yorkshire Coast schoolchildren still feeling effects of Covid lockdowns
England's former Children's Commissioner is giving evidence today
We are hearing how schoolchildren in Scarborough are still feeling the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns.
Teachers have been telling us how some are still catching up on the basics like social skills.
It is as Anne Longfield CBE, Chair of the Commission on Young Lives, and former Children’s Commissioner for England, will be giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry today.
She was Children’s Commissioner for England from March 2015 to March 2021, including for most of the Covid lockdown period.
She will tell the Inquiry how she believes children were overlooked and failed during the pandemic; how the secondary impact on children could have been prevented; and call for a more ambitious recovery plan and a specific Cabinet Minister for Children to tackle the long-term impact of lockdown and school closures on many children.
Lizzy Windram teaches media and film at Scarborough Sixth Form College and has two young children. She said: "We tried to follow the whole curriculum but we couldn't really follow up how much students were doing, so we didn't really know if students were engaging with that work that we were setting. When subsequent year groups came through that hadn't sat their GCSE exams, it had a massive impact when it came to them sitting their A-Levels. They were really unprepared.
"The newer students that come through are a bit more prepared but I think they had basically a whole year of their education where they did very little, it wasn't really checked up on and also in terms of social skills, knowing how to act in the classroom, make friends and socialise, that's had a massive impact on them as well.
"After it all ended, people kind of felt like everything was back to normal for students and my daughter's only nine years-old now, she's got another seven years in the education system at least and that's going to have an impact that whole time. I think for years to come we still need to look back at this and think how has it affected our students.
"I had two children in primary school at the time and I was sitting my bedroom trying to teach live lessons, which I'd never done before, and I would have my son coming in shooting me with a Lego gun but luckily I have very tolerant students.
"At one point I literally had to get a white board, put it outside my door and put the times when they were allowed to come in and the times they weren't allowed to come in."
Stephen Mulryne is the deputy head of the junior school at Scarborough College and he teaches history. He said: "I found some of the younger children to get them engaged when you weren't physically in the room was quite tricky. It then become a bit easier and then as they got older, they were less willing to put their camera on, less willing to speak out in that kind of environment so question and answer sessions were tricky.
"There are some children for whom the online experience was very challenging and the devices that were available was limited. There are some children who are still trying to catch up on those missed basics particularly around social skills as well as academic skills."