4 ways Covid-19 affects mental health in schools and 12 ideas to help
18 minute read.
As part of our response to the pandemic, we’ve been running research with schools to better understand what the impact of the coronavirus has been on mental health and how it might change in the future. We’ve approached this by thinking how student, teacher, and parent/caregiver mental health is connected, as then by improving one area when can help all three groups. The research is in its early stages, and some of the preliminary findings are below. We will be working with schools throughout the Summer and Autumn to improve our understanding and impact.
Awareness of class and status
Technology and space have played a big part in coping with this pandemic. The people more likely to have coped are those with good access to green-, work-, and private spaces, and to technology to assist with work and contacting others. This applies equally to teachers, parents, and children and taps into most aspects of mental health. In the Before Time, when we could freely leave our homes and see our friends, the ownership of space and tech was less important - if you work or study at school you don’t need much of a home office for example. But now these things matter more, which means many of us are acutely aware of how fortunate or not we are compared to others.
This can throw things like class and wealth into stark relief. Where people and especially children don’t have access to a smart phone or social network accounts, this means they are suddenly left out of conversations their more well-off peers are having. Without meaning to they are excluded because normal face-to-face interactions have been replaced with digital (not to mention access to school work and learning resources). Even where this is not the case, realising your home has less space than others or your family is more financially vulnerable can create a sense of lower status and shame in and of itself. Shame is toxic to mental health, while believing you have a higher class or status to others is almost as bad as this perception of inequality leads to feelings of mistrust and alienation.
Many of us are trying to navigate these issues currently, and they will become more dominant when schools return in (probably) the Autumn. Children are especially sensitive to social hierarchies, which are themselves built into schools (starting with pupil-teacher dynamics and then cool kids-other kids, etc.). They are likely to be a source of bullying and fallouts at first. Addressing this requires a two-pronged approach, one trying to sort the practical implications (are learning materials available offline as well? Where can pupils and teachers safely work outside of their homes?) and the other tackling the social ones. Ideas suggested by our research include:
giving teachers the language to talk about complex issues with their students - issues of class and status are inherently personal and so conversations can very easily taken be as offensive. Talking about how to talk about it is useful to get a sense of what can be helpful and making sure the school uses a shared vocabulary. This in turn will help pupils frame their thinking about what is happening to them and their friends.
having an extended inset at the beginning of school - a clear, gradual buildup of lessons and contact will help children and teachers adjust to their new normal and spot problems early on. This time should also incorporate plenty of space for processing in one way or another what is going on, such as through assemblies, class discussion, 1:1 time, etc.
Risky behaviour online
Lockdown has meant large numbers of young people have been left unsupervised for long periods of time with access to the internet and physically isolated from their friends. This is a perfect storm for doing risky things online, such as posting personal information or messaging strangers. For some children this will have gone further, particularly if they have partners with whom they might share intimate pictures with. The implications of this are the same as they were before the pandemic. Children are at risk of grooming and exploitation, of doing things they are uncomfortable with, and blackmail. They are also at risk from bullying from their peers, and even though they may not meet in person the internet has meant they have 24hr access to abusive comments from others.
Supporting vulnerable children is tricky when you don’t meet face-to-face and don’t know who is affected. One way is to increase the opportunities for contact and disclosure such as through:
assemblies - if your school has online assemblies, now is a very good time to have one on online behaviour. Make sure there is a clear way for pupils to get in touch in confidence with someone if they have been affected by any of the issues raised.
1:1 time -this is harder to have now if your school has opted not to have video chats between students and teachers, although prearranged phone calls can also be useful. Five minutes of conversation can help you to gauge a student’s mood, which can indicate how they are coping overall. Ideally this time would be private from family as well to improve confidentiality, although this is unlikely outside of a physical school setting.
The achievement gap
Some children will have good learning experiences at home. When they have access to the right technology (such as computers for online classes), study space and learning support (both from teachers and family), learning is optimal. Other children will be less fortunate, such as having parents that must work and have less time to help them study. This quickly creates a difference in the rate of learning between children and widens as time goes on. This will become most apparent when they return to school and discover they are all at different points in their education. Students who were previously top of their class may be devastated to know this is no longer the case, while others may be pleasantly surprised to find they are doing better than before. The resulting changes in motivation may continue the achievement gap well after schools have resumed.
Now the obvious way to address this is to set more work to enable those that need it to make up for lost time (indeed this is broadly the government’s approach, as they are allocating £1bn for tutors in England alone). However, this will also likely end up harming children’s mental health, as the next section will show. Instead, our research suggested an approach that focuses on improving the quality of work and working relationships, rather than the quantity of work, is more likely to support both mental health and school achievement. Ideas include:
teaching parents effective learning techniques - this is particularly important when schools are closed and parents are taking on teaching responsibilities. Currently the vast majority of parents are tutoring their children without any basic teaching techniques. This leads to inefficient learning and frustration on the part of parents and children because parents don’t know how best to help their kids. Appropriate techniques are even more important for parents of children with SEN needs, such as dyslexia or attention difficulties, where specialist knowledge can mean the difference between understanding a topic or giving up on it altogether. When parents are confident in supporting their children, frustrations are decreased, their relationship improves, and the effort put into learning is more effective.
timely, quality feedback - feedback helps us learn and the closer that feedback is to the initial action (e.g. the completion of work) the more powerful it is in changing behaviour. When students are ‘throwing work into the void’, that is demotivating for them and their parents as both have invested time in getting it done. However, if teachers have too much work to mark this contributes to feeling overworked (see the next section) and the quality of the feedback decreases to compensate. Poor feedback - that which does not motivate a child to take the next step in their learning - is almost as bad as no feedback. Therefore the quantity of feedback is unimportant. What is key is giving children enough information for them to advance in some way.
Overburdened with work
This factor was one that most closely linked teachers’, students’, and parents’ mental health. Setting lots of work takes a larger amount of time and effort for teachers, which adversely affects their work-life balance and increases overall stress levels. This is especially important for a profession notorious for working long hours. The quality of marking is also likely to go down, as time and brain capacity dry up.
At the same time, setting lots of work increases students’ stress levels due to the unique way our brain operates: it will constantly remind you of any unfinished work so you don’t forget it, but if you feel overwhelmed with work you will usually put it off. This ensures the work is left undone but we feel more and more stressed about it, so put it off again, and so on. Critically this means even if children do an appropriate amount of work they can’t just shrug off any excess. Young people are more likely to ignore a large pile of work altogether if just the thought of it seems too much, and doubly so if they are unlikely to receive any feedback from it anyway.
This puts parents in a frustrating position as they want their children to learn, but either have an uphill struggle trying to persuade them to do any work and/or must commit a larger amount of time to support them with the work should they attempt it. This can be made worse if the school’s online learning system helpfully reminds them of all outstanding assignments in LARGE UNIGNORABLE OVERDUE NOTICES, so both parent and child can keep their failings in mind.
It’s natural for this dynamic to become a vicious cycle, where children fall behind in their learning, so are set more work, so fall further behind in their learning. Rather than setting everyone up for failure, here are a few ideas our research came up with:
do one thing well - instead of setting lots of pieces of work, ask for one piece per week that allows students to maximise their learning. This could be a project with several different parts to it as long as it doesn’t seem too intimidating, as feeling on top of learning gives us a sense of mastery, regardless of our actual achievement. This type of work is much more likely to be completed with enthusiasm and cuts the teacher workload drastically.
outdoor learning - particularly at the moment when activities are still restricted, getting out and about is a refreshing break from being inside. Being in a different space gives the impression of a new activity, so is less likely to get lumped together with the mountain of ‘other’ work. A 20 minute outdoor activity is optimal for improving wellbeing, such as collecting inspiration for an art project or investigating the maths behind local architecture. Learning outside is also linked to a range of educational benefits, such as improved self-regulation and retention.
The impact of Covid-19 on school mental health is not all doom and more doom. The corona virus has thrown up a lot of good things too that are just as important to attend to, especially if we want to keep them going past 2020.
Greater accessibility
When social distancing and essential travel came into effect, a huge amount of interaction shifted online. Being able to attend work meetings or a conference from the comfort of your own home benefits us all in different ways:
commuting time is nil - the longer our travel to work the poorer our mental health and the less we enjoy our job. Working from home has on average given us a wellbeing boost, particularly by increasing the amount of time for hobbies and relaxation. Keeping this in some fashion is one of the simplest (although not necessarily easiest) ways to have a big impact on most people’s mental health.
all events are step-free accessible - people with mobility and other location-based needs (such as easy toilet access or uncrowded spaces) can attend more events than before because these are already taken care of. Participating in group events, such as a teachers’ union conference, is beneficial to our mental health in itself, but also means these marginalised voices are more likely to be heard. Maintaining this access is not just desirable but could now be expected under reasonable adjustment legislation.
more learning styles are supported - for some children and teachers in some subjects and activities, online learning is easier. This can be because feedback is automatic (which reduces teacher workload) and instant (which helps pupil learning), learning can be more audio-visual (as with videos) rather than verbal, etc. This helps academic achievement as well as help children figure out what learning styles work for them.
grandma is now online - in many families, particularly with vulnerable and shielding members, the pandemic has been a trigger for learning to use online communication tools. This means in some cases the average amount of contact is higher than before. Friendly chats are incredibly important at this time when the usual support mechanisms are down, and is strongly correlated with mental health resilience and recovery. Teaching children to teach their family to use technology can be a great way to spread this skill.
The four points above are essentially about upping our ability to control our lives, whether through learning, talking or travelling. This is what needs to be carried forward and improved in order to keep wellbeing high.
If you’re interested in finding out more or being part of our research programme, please contact us.