By Kiran Gill, May 13 2020, on tes.com
The pandemic has been tempestuous for our schools. School leaders and staff have risen to each new challenge: keeping children safe, feeding them, awarding qualifications in the absence of exams, and delivering remote learning. As well as short-term demands, schools must grapple with longer-term fallout.
Children who have not had access to books, laptops and internet during lockdown will have fallen the furthest behind. Covid could turn the “poverty gap” into a chasm in terms of academic progress.But there is another gulf becoming apparent: one with the potential to have an even more serious and enduring impact on learning than access to resources: the gap between the children who are safe in lockdown, and those who are not.
This is the trauma gap.
Before Covid-19, 1 in 10 children had had a social worker because of abuse, neglect or other threats to their safety.
Now, with families losing work, experiencing bereavement, anxiety and living in cramped conditions for weeks, mental health problems and trauma are exacerbated as exemplified by the rise in domestic violence during lockdown.
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