Covid school closures and declines in funding and government curriculum has caused parents to wonder if their child will be able to pass on up through to the next grades? In 2020, we watched helplessly as literacy, math, and science rates plummeted. And after one year of school closures; we just knew that after a second, that downward trend will only continue.
For primary students only attending school four out of the last 20 months, it is no wonder they are ill-equipped to confidently move up into the next grade. The previous grade is the foundation year for the following grade. Students should have a solid understanding of math language at this stage. Right now, that foundation is incredibly shaky, and yet they are expected to graduate primary school and move on up – an approach that will be detrimental to their longer-term learning, and most likely lead to drop out within the near future.
Our children start to suffer from something called learning loss. Learning loss happens when knowledge or skills are forgotten by students while they are not in school for extended periods of time. It is also the gap in knowledge or skills that students did not learn, but would have learned in a “normal” year. The shutdown of schools in spring 2020 also caused a major disruption to students’ learning, daily routines and social-emotional well-being. While many teachers, school leaders, and parents have worked tirelessly to help kids keep learning, remote learning hasn’t been equal to the education students would have normally received.
