Most parents believe their children’s social development has been negatively affected by school closures during the Covid pandemic, according to a Central Statistics Office (CSO) study.
The findings were released on Wednesday, marking the fifth anniversary of then taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s announcement of the closure of schools, childcare facilities and universities on March 12th, 2020, for public health reasons.
The survey was carried out online earlier this year is based on more than 20,000 responses from adults.
The pandemic led to the closure of schools between March and June 2020 and January and March/April 2021, as well as the cancellation of Leaving Cert and Junior cycle exams.
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Overall, seven in 10 parents feel their children’s social development, education and learning has been negatively affected by school closures.
Parents with a child attending special school are most likely to feel this, with 82 per cent giving this answer compared to 66 per cent of parents with a child at primary or 75 per cent with children at second level.
The study also shows less well-off parents were most likely to report negative effects to their children. Mothers were more likely than fathers to report ill-effects.
Students aged 18 or over were also asked for their perspectives on the pandemic.
About three-quarters (76 per cent) of respondents who were in secondary school when schools were shut felt their social development, education and learning was hampered. Just shy of two-thirds (64 per cent) of respondents who were in third level felt their education and learning suffered, but a higher proportion believe it negatively affected their social development.
Parents’ and students’ perceptions differ considerably on the impact of third level closures on students’ future career prospects.
Students in third level education at the time were five times more likely than parents of children at third level to believe future career prospects will be positively affected by facility closures (16 per cent and 3 per cent respectively).
Seán Cleary (19) was 14 years old and a second year student at Stepaside Educate Together Secondary School in Dublin when the pandemic hit.
While initially “thrilled” when the Junior Cert exams were cancelled, he recalls finding it difficult to engage with online classes and faced into the daunting prospect of sitting the Leaving Cert without having sat a State exam.
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“It was a weird time,” he says. “Looking back, it’s like I was in second year and then all of a sudden I was in fifth year. It was like a time shift. I don’t really remember third year. One moment we were booked to go away on a class trip, then there was a lockdown,” he says.
Socially, he says, he managed to stay connected with close friends.
“I’ve always been a very social person. I’m a bit of social butterfly, so I don’t think it really affected me like it did with others,” says Cleary, who is now studying veterinary nursing at Munster Technological University in Tralee.
For parents such as Angelina Hynes, the mother of a child with special needs, the pandemic turned out to have a silver lining.
Her daughter Zoe was nine years old when special schools shut for a second time in 2021.
While she was worried then that she had lost vital skills, her daughter, now 13, ended up flourishing socially.
“She had a lot of social anxiety before which is now gone,” she says. “I think she decided: ‘I’m bored stuck here at home with the people I live with. Get me back into the wider world'. She has become a social butterfly. It’s a case of the more people, the merrier.”
