Children and parents revealed mixed emotions this week as schools and universities reopened. Some students seem delighted to reunite with friends while others feel the pressure to catch up on learning missed.
Students at primary schools in Islington returned on Monday 8 March. Secondary school students were welcomed back in phases over the week.
It was the first time since December that students who were not children of frontline workers were back in classrooms, following the country’s third national lockdown.
Islington Now spoke to children and parents across the borough about their thoughts and experiences of the long-awaited return.
Primary Schools
John Greenshields, whose eight-year-old daughter returned to Laycock Primary School on Monday, said: “It felt like a normal day. My daughter managed to lose her coat and her water bottle, which I’m taking is a good sign because she was more interested in playing than keeping her belongings.”
Greenshields said that when his daughter returned from school, it was “just straight back into the eight-year-old girl chat, which is quite a monologue: ‘she said, he said, I did this, I did that’, so it was really good. She’s really enthusiastic.
“It’s not like the start of a term where you’re a bit tired and you don’t really want to go there. I think it feels almost like starting school again.”
Gulcin Ozdemir, Labour councillor for St George’s, whose nine-year-old daughter returned to Grafton Primary School on Monday, said she “was pleasantly surprised to see how ready [her] daughter Leila was to go back to school the night before. She was getting herself ready and was talking about how much she missed her friends”.
Ozdemir said she missed the morning school-run, where they would have “conversations on what superhero powers I would want to have”.
Their route to school has been revamped over lockdown. “It has made all the difference, [as] we walk or cycle to school and it definitely was a much safer and healthier experience,” Ozdemir said. “There were no idling vehicles outside school gates and no cars driving down which was so refreshing to see.
“Seeing her reunite with her friends was so heartwarming.”
However, Ozdemir did admit to missing her daughter throughout the day.
In terms of Covid-19, Greenshields said the school felt safe.
“It’s probably testament to the teachers that they’ve been able to create an environment that kids want to be in and that’s not a scary space,” he said. “The [children] are aware of Covid but they’re not worried about it in terms of being surrounded by germs or anything so, yeah, it’s good.”
The government has advised that pre-school and primary school pupils do not need to be regularly tested for Covid. Staff will be offered home testing kits.
Amina Bella, whose children are at Hanover Primary School, said no children or classes had been sent home to isolate “just yet”.
“The school has sent an email to parents encouraging them to order home testing kits for regular testing,” she said. “I’m sure it’s to try to avoid sending any class home.”
Secondary Schools
On the other hand, the government has advised that secondary school and college students should be tested for Covid-19 four times a week upon return – three times on site at the school or at a college testing site and a fourth time at home. Following this, students will be given home testing kits and have been asked to regularly test themselves twice a week.
Fifteen-year-old Sasha, who is at Highbury Grove Academy, said each year group at his school had been tested for Covid-19 the day before they returned. Year 11 students were tested on Monday and Year 10 on Tuesday. Only those years were at school on Wednesday 10 March for the first full day back.
Sasha said he did not particularly like school and really enjoyed online learning. “If you were struggling with something you could spend more time on that,” he said. “You could do the lesson at your own pace, even though we were in live lessons.”
However, Sasha also said there had been times when he “found it impossible to motivate [himself]”. Having started his GCSE courses in September 2019, he said his learning had been affected.
One thing Sasha found frustrating on Wednesday was that all his “teachers gave us the same speech that we have fallen behind so we’re all going to have to work and it’s going to be quite a lot of hard work, and everybody was just like: ‘it’s not our fault, like give us some slack’”.
He also said teachers told them there would not be time to go over anything taught in online learning, which he thought was “quite unfair” as there were “loads of people that didn’t have access to good computers or computers at all to join the live lessons”.
Above all, Sasha said the whole thing had been surreal. “I can’t quite believe what’s happening and I’m just like, oh, I’m going to wake up from some weird dream and be back in year 8 when there’s no Covid,” he said.
Ziba, 14, who is also at Highbury Grove but is in Year 9, returned to school on Thursday.
Speaking to Islington Now on Wednesday evening, having visited school for the first time in months to take a Covid-19 test, Ziba said that while she also “liked online learning”, she was “really excited to go back to school”. After having a massive break from it last year, she suddenly “loved school so much”.
Ziba is concerned about getting tested every week. Although it “obviously needs to happen” when someone tests positive, she said, “the whole class then has to go home and isolate for two weeks… I’m just worried that in the end I’m not going to get that much school time”.
While a big factor in Ziba’s positivity for returning to school was reuniting with friends, she was also excited to “be able to just speak to the teacher, without… being embarrassed”, as she often felt on Google Meets when “no one would ever give an answer”.
Universities
Even though school students are all getting the opportunity to return, students at universities have been advised not to return unless it is vital for the completion of their course.
Universities have differed in their approach: some offer lateral flow tests for students who need to visit campus and others advised students not to return for the second semester.
Hematullah Khurasani, a third-year computer science student at City, University of London, said he was not able to return to university for any classes but was able to go on to campus for private study, for instance by booking a space in a library.
Khurasani said everything had been online for him this year and it had been “hard to focus [as he has] no motivation”. He returned to campus this week to work on a project, but “won’t have any more classes [on campus] this year”.
He said he had “found this year boring and irritating. I feel mostly behind with everything”.
Khurasani is due to graduate this year and said he “won’t be doing any more university after this year. I’m done with studying”.
Second-year journalism student Marianna Casal, who is also at City, is able to return to classes. She said she was “excited to see people and not always be on Zoom calls”.
Casal said she sometimes felt “self-conscious when using Zoom because you can’t see people’s faces or reactions to stuff”. “It’s been difficult doing the radio and TV modules on my laptop and phone,” she said.
She also said the lockdowns had impacted her mental health but she was looking forward to the future. “I was so busy before this,” she said. “I am really excited to be busy again. I was really into sports, music and social life. I did so much all the time. It will be strange to be busy again.”
Additional reporting by Rosie McCabe and Sabrina Fearon-Melville.
