Schools across the UK were mostly closed from March to July 2020 due to Covid-19. Therefore, parents and children found themselves thrust into a prolonged period of home-schooling. In this study, ...parents (N = 2,122) reported on their children's (N = 3,230) home-schooling experiences and its impacts on their children's academic progress. Parental reports suggest that children spent around 3 hours each weekday doing schoolwork at home. Children enrolled in private secondary schools received 4 hours of virtual lessons each weekday from teachers, while state school children received just 1 hour. Parents, on the whole, reported concern for children's academic progress. This is particularly so for children in secondary school and, most strikingly, those in school years antecedent to final exams (Years 10 and 12). Parents were less concerned about academic progress for those in Years 11 and 13, who had received their final exam grades shortly before the time of the survey. This study highlights the fact that children have been unequally affected by Covid-19 school closures, depending on their year group and school type, which should be considered in future research and policy.
In this article we consider the applicability of distance education on the elementary level from parents’ perspectives and present the limitations stemming from the degree of support that students in ...elementary education need from their parents. The dilemmas regarding the possible levels of students’ development of independence and self-orientation, and the parents’ roles are highlighted. We believe that due to these limitations, distance learning has some of the characteristics of home-schooling. The subject of the research in the empirical part of this study focused on parents’ attitudes. Parental attitudes, based on a previously established multi-factor model, become clear from the parents’ experiences (Kolak, Markić & Horvat, 2020) where factors regarding the demands of teaching and the competence of parents as substitute teachers, were separated. Parents’ characteristics (e.g., gender, age, educational status and involvement) were found to influence their attitudes. The results of the research indicate the importance of parents in distance learning during the pandemic which adds a new and more significant role in the educational process of their children.
As from the first quarter of 2020, the spotlight in global news has shone brightly on the Covid-19 pandemic story. One of the major shifts occurred in education as efforts to stem the spread of the ...virus prompted school closures. Schools gradually shifted to online teaching, and parents were thus forced to combine their regular jobs with supporting the education of their children. Through the collection of qualitative data from focus groups held with various stakeholders, this paper seeks to explore the emerging home-schooling scenario in Malta and the unplanned for and unprecedented adaptation to an online education environment, in order to examine the novel challenges and tensions that emerged between family, school and work. Despite being conducted in a relatively small nation state, this study offers the possibility of opening a dialogue within the global context with ramifications of a new paradigm shift in education, re-shaped by the novel coronavirus.
This paper examines the recent noticeable rise in parents and carers in England, deciding to home school their children. This rise has been attributed to schools advising parents with ‘difficult’ ...children, those with special educational needs or behavioural problems, that they have a choice; home educate or their child will be permanently excluded. Also, there is a rise in parents removing children from schools due to bullying, school refusal and general unhappiness with school regimes and demands made on learners. The paper discusses causes of this increase in elective home schooling and examines the policy changes proposed and implemented by successive governments. Recently, concerns have arisen over what type of education is being offered to children by poorly educated parents, the rise of so called temporary schools in unsuitable buildings, concerns over religious indoctrination and the lack of a broad and balanced curriculum being offered, which could result in a lack of future employment opportunities for students. Certainly, a new approach is urgently needed if children’s futures are to be protected.
In the COVID-19 crisis, the science of learning has two different responsibilities: first, to offer guidance about how best to deal with the impact of the current situation, including lockdown and ...home-schooling; and second, to consider bigger questions about what this large-scale educational experiment might mean for the future. The first part of this Viewpoint summarises advice for parents on mental health, and on becoming stand-in-teachers. The second part, taking the longer view, considers the potential negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis in increasing inequality in education; but also the potential positive impact of driving innovations in technology use for educating children.
Parents' everyday realities of enforced home-schooling during COVID-19 may offer important insights into strengths and weakness of education systems. This article presents findings from a qualitative ...study involving parents of primary-school-age children in England during the first 'lockdown'. Parents shared common concerns with routine, motivation, resources, support, and children's wellbeing, and responded creatively to the challenges they faced. We argue that focusing narrowly on 'learning loss' and getting 'back on track' may lead to impoverished educational experiences post-COVID-19, and that a broad, engaging curriculum with social and emotional wellbeing at its core will support children's thriving in an uncertain future.
Millions were affected by COVID-19 school closures, with parents and schools caught unprepared. Education is expected to play a role in creating equal opportunities, so transferring schooling ...responsibilities to families may have increased learning inequalities generated by family backgrounds. We examined the time students spent on home learning and explored the role of the schools’ distance teaching provision in explaining differences traditionally attributed to parental education, eligibility for free school meals, ethnic background and single parenthood. Using the Understanding Society COVID-19 dataset, we found children who received free school meals, single-parent families and children with parents with lower formal education qualifications and Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds spent significantly less time on schoolwork. However, schools’ provision of offline and online distance teaching and homework checking significantly increased the time spent on learning and reduced some inequalities, demonstrating the policy relevance of digital preparedness to limit learning loss in school closures.
To slow down the spread of the COVID-19 virus, schools around the world were closed in early 2020, transferring children's scholastic activities to the homes and imposing a massive burden on parents ...and school-age children. Using data of a 21-day diary study conducted between March and April 2020 in Germany, this work examined whether (a) distance learning and (b) parents' involvement therein were associated with negative parent-child interactions and affective well-being of parents and children, over and above the effect of daily stressors. Participants were 562 parents (489 mothers, Mage = 42.79, SDage = 6.12, range = 25-63) most of whom were married (n = 382, 68.0%). They responded to the daily items with respect to the youngest child living in their household (Mage = 9.74, SDage = 2.81, range = 6-19). On days when children were working on school tasks, parents reported more negative parent-child interactions as well as lower parental and child positive affect and higher child negative affect, but not higher parental negative affect. Moreover, days when parents were more heavily involved in learning (i.e., when children worked less independently) were days with more negative parent-child interactions, lower parental and child positive affect, and higher parental and child negative affect. Negative parent-child interactions were linked to lower affective well-being of parents and children, and partially accounted for the relation among daily stressors and affective well-being. The present work highlights the need for measures to better support school-age children and their parents during distance learning.
In a radically changed and still changing world, parents, schools and pupils have had to adapt to a new teaching and learning modality. Working parents have faced the competing demands of employment ...and home-schooling, and schools provided support to pupils through online platforms and other resources. A qualitative approach elicited the views and experiences of working parents through a social media parents' group in Northern Ireland (NI). Only well-educated mothers responded revealing their extreme lack of confidence and pedagogical skills, complete exhaustion, frayed family relationships, and acute concern about children's educational loss and its future implications, particularly those for whom public examinations were imminent. Communication between teachers and both pupils and parents was deemed crucial, as were greater clarity from teachers on tasks set, less screen time, daily live interaction, feedback on work done, and more printed resources from schools to avoid undue expense for parents, especially those with children of different ages in different education sectors. Much more effective home-schooling could be facilitated if government required employers to arrange flexible working hours, at least for one parent. However, the creation of a daily structure that included lessons and leisure, the latter both indoors and outdoors, was beneficial and therapeutic.
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