Recovering from a Global Pandemic

...simply being back in school with their friends has been the best tonic.

Whilst we are all pleased to be over the pandemic, it has been really important for us as a school to acknowledge the impact it has had on our young people, parents and staff. The long-term effects will be studied and discussed for some time to come in research papers and in the press, and KPS have reflected on, and continue to notice, how our children have been affected.

Some of the impact has been positive. We have seen even some of our youngest pupils demonstrate independence by coming into school without a parent’s hand to hold, the ability to knuckle down to research tasks with focus and self-motivation and a renewed enthusiasm for being at school with friends and ‘live’ teachers.

delayed speech and social skills development due to the lack of social interaction in the very early years. Reading facial expressions through a mask is difficult for anyone and part of learning to speak is observing movements of the mouth. We have noticed an increase in children displaying anxiety and some difficulties with friendships, which is reflected in the national picture for young people.

At KPS, we pride ourselves on pastoral care and putting the happiness and wellbeing of our children at the heart of everything we do. The great news is that we are already seeing calmer, happier children as we move further away from the periods of lockdown learning and re-embrace the buzzing, fun-filled learning environment that we know makes KPS such a special place to be.

Our pastoral tracking system, AS tracking, has been an invaluable tool to enable teachers to ‘see’ any hidden vulnerabilities that pupils may have and to do lots of work in the background to encourage children to share worries and rebuild resilience. All teachers have created additional ‘time to talk’ sessions and we have placed great importance on valuing all opinions. Our Wellbeing Program has extended across the school with children working in small groups, whole class settings and even 1:1 sessions with staff who are there to listen, ask the right questions and allow children to reflect on things that are important to them. We have seen such positive outcomes for many children and they really look forward to these sessions. Our whole class sessions focus on building skills that are needed at all stages of life, such as problem solving, leadership skills, decision making, teamwork and effective communication. In Year 6, the children attend a weekly Wellbeing session with staff from across the school, and participate in a variety of different activities. Some children love to walk through our beautiful grounds, some do art and craft activities, some play games, all the while chattering endlessly and having that space to talk about school life. We are extremely lucky to have a School Counsellor available to those children that need a little extra support and we have again noticed really positive outcomes for those children.

For many of our children, simply being back in school with their friends has been the best tonic and our playgrounds are full of laughter, chatter and smiling faces.