Oxfordshire's children facing mental health challenge due to pandemic

There is however evidence to suggest that attendance in Oxfordshire is bucking the national trend since all children and students were able to return to school on March 8.

Oxfordshire County Council's schools and education chief has this week laid out the challenges facing the large numbers of children who have had to learn from behind a laptop in their own homes for most of the past year.

Speaking at the councils Education Scrutiny Committee yesterday (Wednesday, April 21), Kevin Gordon said: "We think young people’s mental wellbeing is something we have got to keep focussing on. It is going to be one of our biggest challenges our biggest areas of need. It was there already but it has been amplified and exacerbated by the pandemic."

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The corporate director of children’s services added a national programme was now being rolled out to support children and young adults with mental health issues, and that teachers and other staff would be trained through this scheme.

The council has also been advertising the social services and mental health support it has available for young people through social media, and is hoping to see an uptake in the number of people asking for help.

A national snapshot survey carried out in January by the charity Young Minds found that 75 per cent of 2,438 young people had found the third lockdown the most-taxing for their mental health.

It recommended wellbeing was 'a priority in school catch-up planning', and dissuaded measures from the Government like extending the school day to catch up on missed work.

And during the Oxfordshire education scrutiny meeting, there was very little mention of catching up on missed work or improving grades in school.

Kevin Gordon, Oxfordshire County Council’s Corporate Director of Children’s Services.

Mr Gordon said children's other needs had to be taken into account alongside their grades.

He added: "We have got to get through the next stages of the roadmap and we now need to be preparing for the new normal which is probably a significant amount of our children and young people who have been impacted by the pandemic whose education will have suffered despite the herculean efforts of our school staff.

"We now need to attend to addressing those future needs and they are not just about education attainment and learning, they are about the person as a whole."

Despite the difficulties facing students wellbeing, Mr Gordon showed the committee the latest attendance data for schools across Oxfordshire, which appeared to show the county's schools were more well-attended than the English average.

The latest attendance data for April 20, showed an attendance rate in schools of 94.6 per cent, with 97.5 per cent of primary school pupils in class, as well as 91.3 per cent of secondary students, and 89.8 per cent of special school pupils.

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Mr Gordon did make allowances for the fact that some schools across England had different term dates to those in Oxfordshire, and this may have affected attendance records since March.

And committee member Emma Turnbull asked if there were particular sections of the community who had not yet sent their children back to school.

Mr Gordon said this was unlikely to be the case and added: "I wouldn’t like to think there is a big group of children out there who are not attending. We are back now to, probably not the right phrase, but ‘peacetime’ attendance rates."

However, his colleague Deborah Bell, the head of learner engagement services, said there could possibly be children who should be at school in Oxfordshire 'stuck' abroad with family after changes in travel restrictions, because parents may not want to pay to quarantine in a ‘grotty hotel near Heathrow Airport’.

She added this was likely to be a national issue.

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The committee also heard that the Department for Education had provided funding to continue providing free school meals over the next school holiday period, but there was little information about if this might be extended in future.

The number of coronavirus infections in Oxfordshire schools is also currently low.

As of Wednesday, five children were confirmed to have Covid 19, and a total of 15 were self-isolating with possible symptoms.

Council staff member Kim James compared this with the height of the second wave, and said there were 1,008 children self-isolating on January 15.

No school staff in Oxfordshire are currently sick with Covid or are self-isolating.

Ms James added: "It is a really good number, not good for them [the children] obviously but it demonstrates the really good work that is going on."

The NHS provides advice on children's mental health and the pandemic at nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters