South Wales West MS Tom Giffard rd on how Covid has impacted education

PARENTS, pupils and, in particular, teaching staff have really risen to the challenge of working differently and competing with ever-changing rules and regulations to meet that difficult balance between providing an excellent education and keeping themselves and others safe.

We all know the value of a single school day.

The lessons learnt, whether they’re on the curriculum or not, are invaluable and incomparable, and last year in Wales, pupils lost 66 of those days due to Covid-19 measures in place in Wales, which is more time in the classroom lost than in any other part of the UK.

Estyn have made clear that that meant that learners’ maths, reading, Welsh language and social skills have all suffered as a result of school closures. But the truth is we just don’t know yet how significant the impact will be in the long term. Even despite the fantastic efforts of parents, teachers and pupils, learning virtually just isn’t the same as being in a classroom.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted that current learners are likely to earn less, and estimated that this difference could be up to £40,000. This lost learning across the 66 days has resulted in longterm prospects of children being affected significantly.

They’ve also predicted that the financial cost of students in Wales sufficiently catching up with the schooling they’ve missed would be around £1.4 billion, but even then, that would likely result in students being overburdened with work and necessary pressure to catch up on the skills and work that they had not the chance to learn in the first instance. We need to make sure that we don’t have a lost generation of Covid children in Wales.