What children need to flourish: insights from a qualitative study of children's mental health and wellbeing in the pandemic

ABSTRACT

This study explored the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of primary school aged children in the UK, through the perspectives of teachers and parents through surveys and interviews. Results highlighted the heterogeneity within children’s experiences and the detrimental impacts of the lockdowns on social development. Importantly, many participants also drew attention to the benefits of the less pressurised schooling, which were perceived as having a positive impact on behaviour, wellbeing and academic progress. The paper applies insights from the findings to the reimagining of primary education to support children’s flourishing post-pandemic. It contends that prioritising children’s social and emotional development is key to supporting children’s flourishing in the recovery period and is a prerequisite for effective learning more widely. However, the paper argues for a critical ecological approach to wellbeing in schools: while individualised interventions such as counselling may be part of the solution, what is needed is a deeper and longer-term transformation of the system in which time and capacity for fostering strong relationships and children’s active engagement are placed at the heart of primary education.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health
• wellbeing
• COVID-19 pandemic
• primary education
• bioecological model
• relationships

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic and public health responses of lockdowns and social distancing have had an enormous impact on many areas of public and individual life and one of the most heavily affected groups has been children and young people. Whilst their experiences have varied greatly (Pascal et al. 2020), evidence suggests that the pandemic has had a significant negative impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing (DfE 2020; NHS Digital 2021). Educational disruption, family stress and bereavement, loneliness and loss of play have all played a part (Hoffman and Miller 2020; Rogers 2022) and the impacts have been disproportionately seen in ‘the most vulnerable and marginalised in society’ (Barnardos 2020, 3).

One consequence of this in the UK context has been an increased focus on the mental health of children and young people, including the role of schools in addressing the challenges and supporting positive wellbeing as part of the COVID-19 recovery. Concerns over wellbeing were posited by the Government as central to the drive to get children and young people back to school after the lockdowns (Children’s Society 2021). Nadhim Zahawi, then Minister for Education, announced his intention to ‘put wellbeing at the centre of everything we do in schools alongside a drive for rigorous standards and high performance’ (Gov UK 2021) and additional funding was allocated for various initiatives in schools including mental health interventions and training a senior mental health lead to be placed in all schools.

However, schools and teachers already faced challenges in responding to pupils’ social and emotional needs prior to the pandemic, compounded by cuts to mental health services, reduced school budgets and increased curriculum load (NEU 2021; Patalay et al. 2020). In the face of policy focus on catching up on lost learning, teachers and teacher unions have expressed deep concerns over the balancing of wellbeing and learning and emphasised the need for long-term solutions to what they see as chronic pre-existing issues (Moss et al. 2021; NEU 2021). This paper suggests that exploring children’s experiences of the changes to normal schooling during the pandemic – including schooling at home and in smaller class sizes within school – functions as a critique of ‘normal’ schooling which can offer important insights for the project of reimagining education in a post-pandemic world.

Children’s mental health and wellbeing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic

The rhetoric of responding to children’s mental health needs in terms of recovery from the pandemic can serve to obscure the fact that the previous decades saw an upward trend in poor childhood mental health, which had reached a point of high prevalence prior to the pandemic (Collishaw 2015; DfE 2020; Patalay et al. 2020; Pitchforth, Viner, and Hargreaves 2016). A large national study, the Mental Health of Children and Young People in England study, reported for example that one in eight children and young people aged between 5 and 19 years had at least one mental health disorder (Sadler et al. 2018) and recent estimations extend that to as high as one in six (Vizard et al. 2020). Furthermore, these figures do not include the many more children and young people who do not meet the criteria for clinical diagnoses but still have significant levels of psychological distress and poor wellbeing (Fazel et al. 2014).

Rising figures can in part be seen to reflect an increase in awareness in schools, increased help-seeking behaviours of children and their families and an expansion of classifications of disorders (Collishaw 2015). However, even taking these into account, research demonstrates an increase in poor childhood mental health and wellbeing which is tied to a range of factors including poverty and rising inequality (Allen et al. 2014), and which may also be influenced by features within schools such as increased focus on testing (Danby and Hamilton 2016). A large body of research demonstrates the negative consequences of childhood poor mental health both for children’s present enjoyment of school and academic attainment (Durlak et al. 2011; Panayiotou, Humphrey, and Wigelsworth 2019) as well as impacts for later life (Clarke and Lovewell 2021; Copeland et al. 2015). Along with the growing prevalence of mental health difficulties, this situates fostering children's positive mental health as a pressing public health concern.

Wellbeing and mental health support in schools

Against this context, the past decades have witnessed a consensus at both research and policy level over the view that fostering social and emotional wellbeing should form an important part of schools’ role (Fazel et al. 2014; Goldberg et al. 2019; Panayiotou, Humphrey, and Wigelsworth 2019). Recognition of the importance of wellbeing has been at the heart of government policy, seen for example in the 2003 Government Green Paper Every Child Matters (DfES 2003) and subsequent 2004 Children’s Act. A growth of research under the umbrella acronym SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) has focused on the effectiveness of fostering social and emotional skills through school-based interventions, including universal school-wide interventions aimed at all pupils as well as targeted interventions for those children most at risk (Domitrovich et al. 2017; Fazel et al. 2014; Goldberg et al. 2019). Evidence regarding the effectiveness of these initiatives has however been mixed; to paraphrase Jones and Bouffard (2012, 6), all intervention programmes are not created equal and some programmes are more effective than others. Much recent research has particularly focused on a ‘whole school’ or ‘systemic SEL’ approach to supporting children’s social and emotional skills, led by the Collaborative for the Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning in the United States (CASEL 2008). As well as school conditions, this has stressed the need to address wider systems of the community and family and the need for schools to develop partnerships with parents and support networks. This has marked a valuable way forward in supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing as, rather than seeing poor mental health as something which needs to be addressed within the individual, the focus is shifted on to the health of the environment in which children live and develop, moving from a deficit approach towards a promotive strengths-based approach to supporting childhood mental health.

However, evidence of effectiveness in practice remains mixed, as seen for example in evaluations of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) initiative, introduced in primary and secondary schools in the UK in the early 2000s (Lendrum, Humphrey, and Wigelsworth 2013). Research has highlighted the failure of the focus on school conditions to take sufficient account of the different social contexts in which schools operate and have focused instead on how malleable school-level factors, such as the school climate, can suggest a more fruitful path for intervention for fostering more equitable learning conditions (Mahoney et al. 2020; Patalay et al. 2020).

Children’s mental health and wellbeing in the COVID-19 pandemic

Empirical studies of children’s mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic provide a mixed picture. The prolonged school closures, social isolation and economic consequences served to increase many risk factors associated with poor mental health and wellbeing, such as increased parental stress levels and loneliness, whilst simultaneously removing many of the supportive factors for wellbeing such as schools and sports clubs (Hoffman and Miller 2020; Roubinov, Bush, and Boyce 2020; Vizard et al. 2020). Whilst research suggests that most children coped well, an emerging body of evidence documents the negative impacts experienced by many children, which have been disproportionately felt by those from disadvantaged backgrounds (Children’s Society 2021; Pascal et al. 2020). Evidence suggests that children with pre-existing mental health problems were particularly impacted, in part because of the disruption to support services (Zijlmans et al. 2021).

However, it is notable that there is also a much smaller but significant literature which draws attention to some benefits for mental wellbeing of the changes to schooling in the pandemic. These point to the benefits of reduced stress associated with school and increased play and autonomy during the first lockdown (e.g. Rogers 2022). A recent study carried out by BERA (Oliver et al. 2021) into the experiences of autistic young people and their parents during the pandemic suggested that the lockdowns were in part experienced as a relief from some of the ordinary workings of mainstream school, both for the pupils and the parents. This is also echoed in an Australian study (Heyworth et al. 2021) which found that many autistic young people reported flourishing at home both educationally and personally. Taken together, this suggests the need to understand children’s experiences in the pandemic not just with a view to helping those experiencing poor mental health but also to gain an insight into supporting wellbeing more generally in post-pandemic life (Bruining et al. 2021).

Study aims

While most research has focused on the negative impacts of the pandemic on childhood mental health and wellbeing, there has been less focus on areas of positive impact which were facilitated by the disruptions to normal schooling, and the insights these provide into the school-as-usual model. This paper aims to contribute to this conversation by exploring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of primary school aged children in the UK. Our focus was on the lessons that can be learned from children’s experiences, in particular, those directly related to the lockdowns and associated changes in schooling, into what support children need in order to flourish in the recovery period and more widely.

Bioecological systems approach

The present study draws on the framework of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 1998; Bronfenbrenner and Cici 1994) as a theoretical lens through which to consider the study’s findings for the context of lessons learned from the pandemic for primary education going forward. This model asserts that children’s development is driven by ‘proximal processes’ which take place between the child and persons, objects or symbols in their immediate environment (or microsystem) (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 1998, 996). These processes are in turn influenced by features of the broader social and political context, as well as the historical time in which the person lives. The bioecological approach extends Bronfenbrenner’s earlier ecological model (1979), to emphasise how changes in the proximal environment interact with characteristics of the person in a way which shapes the development of genetic potentials of the individual, leading to effective psychological functioning and developmental competence. Merçon-Vargas et al. (2020) extend this further to include the concept of inverse proximal processes – those interactions which produce dysfunction and reduce competency. We suggest that the bioecological systems theory provides a useful framework for exploring the reciprocal interactions between children’s individual experiences and their environment in the context of the pandemic, in which the school setting is of central importance.

Methods

Context

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic on 11th March 2020, initiating public health measures to contain the spread in many countries across the globe. In the UK, major lockdowns took place in March–June 2020 and January–March 2021. This led to the physical closure of school for most children, though the children of critical workers as well as those classed as ‘vulnerable’ were in many cases able to access school. The present study was carried from May to July 2021 after the second major national lockdown in the UK.

Research design

The current study sought to gain an understanding of the impacts on children’s mental health using a mixed methods qualitative interpretivist approach. Since COVID restrictions posed difficulties for speaking directly with children at the time, we decided to use online methods to investigate the perspectives of teachers and parents. While this presents a limitation to the research, it allowed us to gather rich data of the views of two important and highly impacted groups who are often under consulted. Whilst the crucial role played by parents hardly needs stating, schools also played a vital role in supporting children which has not been well documented (Moss et al. 2021). Our methods comprised of online interviews with teachers, and an online survey with parents, using the same overarching research questions to facilitate integration:

1. What are parents’ and teachers’ perspectives of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically the lockdowns and school closures, on the mental health and wellbeing of primary school aged children?

2. What can teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of the experiences of children in the pandemic offer for learning about the role of schools in supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing?

Data collection and participants

Interviews

One-to-one semi-structured interviews were carried out with nine primary school teachers (one male, eight female). Teachers were from different state primary schools in England (eight) and Wales (one), which ranged in levels of affluence of the area and number of Pupil Premium children. Teachers had between 12 and 26 years of teaching experience and taught in Reception class (two), Key Stage 1 (three) and Key Stage 2 (four). Participants were accessed using a range of strategies, including asking contacts within schools to act as gatekeepers, and through online teacher platforms such as the ‘Education Wellbeing Collective’.

Interviews were conducted over Zoom by the first author of this paper and lasted between 25 and 35 min. Teachers were sent a list of interview questions prior to the interview as a general guide only, which included questions around perceived changes (negative or positive) in children’s mental health and wellbeing; what factors were perceived to have contributed to any changes; approaches already in place in their school to support mental health; and the support teachers felt was needed in order to effectively support children’s mental health going forward. The interviews were auto-transcribed using Otter.ai and edited against the recordings by the first author.

Surveys

An online survey was carried out with parent participants using open-ended questions to elicit parents’ views on the impacts of the pandemic and subsequent changes to schooling on their children, and their views on the role of education in fostering children’s mental health more widely. Closed-ended questions were included to gather socio-demographic data and details of children’s schooling situation during the pandemic. Participants were recruited using a snowballing technique, posting the link to information about the survey to parent Facebook pages and various other relevant social media platforms. A total of 136 parent participants gave completed survey responses (129 mothers, 7 fathers). As some participants responded for multiple children, this gave data for a total of 165 children. Participants were predominantly White-British (93%) and lived in England (83%), Wales (13%) or Northern Ireland (1%). Participants’ children covered a range of ages between Reception and Year 6 and included 86 girls and 79 boys; of these, 34 were entitled to free school meals and 19 were described by parents as having additional mental health needs prior to the pandemic.

Ethics

Ethical approval for the study was received from the University of Bristol School of Education Research Ethics Committee. Emphasis was placed throughout on anonymity and confidentiality as well as participants’ freedom to withdraw from the research at any time, and we adopted a relaxed approach to the interviews to try to mitigate potential power dynamics between researcher and participants. We were highly aware of the additional stresses being faced by teachers and parents at the time and care was taken to avoid asking potentially upsetting questions around participants’ own wellbeing in the pandemic. In particular, research collected in the pandemic backed up our own anecdotal evidence that many teachers had felt under-appreciated and not consulted in the public domain in the COVID-19 context and more generally (Education Support 2020) which made it crucial that teachers were seen as active in the production of the research (Willig 2013).

Data analysis

Analysis of both the interview and the qualitative survey data was carried out using the model of reflexive thematic analysis developed by Braun and Clarke (2006, 2019). The two sets of data were analysed separately by the first author of the current paper using a primarily inductive approach which developed initial codes and themes ‘bottom up’ from the data, to endeavour as far as possible to represent meanings as held by the participants (Braun and Clarke 2019). Themes, conceptualised as ‘patterns within data’ (Braun and Clarke 2006, 83), were then discussed and further refined as a research team, going backwards and forwards to the data. As part of our reflexive approach, we tried to take seriously the interpretivist view that, as Greene notes, ‘[a]ll social inquiry is conducted from within the inquirer’s particular ways of seeing, hearing, and understanding the social world’ (2007, 66–67). Hence, we attempted as researchers to make our own assumptions explicit, specifically those arising from our own situated contexts as mothers of primary school children in the pandemic.

Findings

Below we outline the main themes developed in our analysis, illustrated through brief extracts taken from the data. In keeping with the qualitative framework used, occurrence of themes is not quantified (Braun et al. 2020), although care is taken to represent how far perceptions in the data are shared.

Interview data findings

Emotional and behavioural shifts depended on the context of the individual child

Teacher participants highlighted that children’s mental health was seen to be dependent on factors within their specific context. Teacher participants found children to have been ‘surprisingly resilient’ (T5) and in general saw little evidence of negative impact:

They’ve all come back really, really happy. I’ve seen no difference in personalities at all. And they just seem really pleased to see each other, they’ve all got on well, as they did before. (T2)

Where issues were seen, this was often attributed to pre-existing emotional and behavioural difficulties, typified in one teacher’s comment:

If they had an issue regarding mental health, it was predisposed already. COVID […] might have exacerbated the situation for a while. But on the whole, they came back very calm. (T6)

The individual child’s homelife was also identified as a significant factor and the stress of parents having to balance home-schooling and childcare with work commitments was commented upon throughout the data, not least within teachers’ references to their own family situation. The amount of time and positive attention that was available to children from key adults was seen to be a crucial factor in how well children were able to cope, which was seen as influenced by pupils’ cultural background and cutting across all levels of the socio-economic spectrum. In particular, all teacher participants emphasised the key supportive nature of increased one-to-one attention where the lockdown changes had allowed for this, both at home and within the smaller class sizes in school.

The benefits of lockdown schooling

Teacher participants highlighted many perceived benefits of the lockdowns. The changed learning conditions were seen to have allowed some children to ‘thrive’ (T5), particularly where they had experienced difficulties at school prior to the pandemic:

… lots of children found … find school very difficult. So, when for the lockdown, a lot of children that have a lot of difficulties at school, actually seemed to do a lot better at home. So having a different type of learning, really benefitted them. (T8)

For those learning in school during the lockdowns, the smaller class sizes and increased attention were seen to have contributed to children’s sense of wellbeing and their academic progress. One teacher participant’s comments were typical:

And then for the children who were at school, they were in a class of 10, or 12, rather than a class of 30. And lots of them really enjoyed that … loved having the small class … . They contributed more, they had a lot more teacher attention. They found the work easier because they had more support with it. (T5)

The easing of the curriculum in the first lockdown specifically was perceived as a key facilitator. Teachers highlighted the time it gave to build stronger teacher–pupil relationships, and for more freedom to pursue non-academic activities, describing benefits for both the pupils and teachers. One teacher commented that her smaller class size allowed for the voices of usually ‘invisible children’ to be heard, who were in turn able to ‘flourish’ (T3). Benefits were noted particularly in the context of those children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with additional needs, where stronger teacher–pupil relationships were linked to academic progress, increased confidence and wellbeing, and improved behaviour:

[L]ots of more positive relationships have been formed with some of the vulnerable [children] – you know, some of the children who would disrupt lessons normally. (T8)

Wellbeing as the foundation of learning

The perception of wellbeing as crucial for children’s ability to learn effectively was a strong thread running throughout the data, summarised eloquently by Teacher 7:

If they’re happy, they’re going to be good learners, if they’re unhappy, they’re not going to learn. (T7)

This teacher participant echoed the views of other participants, suggesting strongly that much more priority should be given to non-academic activities, which were seen as enabling ‘those who aren’t as academically able, [to] still be successful’ (T7). The benefits of non-academic activities in the first lockdown were directly linked to children’s ability to learn effectively:

So once we’d had the experience outside and listened to the birds and smelt the wood and felt the grass and then we could come back in and do some beautiful writing. And the children had the vocabulary to write down or had ideas to write down. (T7)

The value of specific wellbeing approaches such as the ELSA intervention, which trains teaching assistants in giving individualised support to meet individual pupils’ emotional needs, and mental health counsellors in school was mentioned by several teacher participants. However, interventions were also described as ‘tick boxy’ (T8) and unhelpful in encouraging children to ‘exaggerate feelings’ (T1). Fostering wellbeing was presented by all teachers as something which instead needed to be integrated into the school, prioritised through time for developing relationships and activities which fostered children’s engagement. It was notable that where teacher participants described the prioritising of support for wellbeing as very much integral to their school and valued by senior leadership, children were perceived to be positive and displaying little in the way of impact from the pandemic in terms of behaviour or wellbeing.

The stresses of normal school

In contrast, however, a significant thread running throughout the data emphasised the multiple stresses which attend school outside of COVID times, for both teachers and pupils alike. Teacher participant 8, for example, described school as ‘not very, necessarily healthy for children’ and school conditions were also presented as detrimental for teachers’ wellbeing. Like other teacher participants in the study, this participant tied the stresses of school, both for pupils and teachers, explicitly to the testing and accountability culture of schools, describing the ‘level of scrutiny and expectation on children to perform’ as ‘just dehumanising’, noting that ‘it just makes me want to cry most days’ (T8). This was echoed by other participants in the sample:

[I]t’s way too stressful being a primary teacher. It’s just horrendous  …  because we have to, you know, jump through these stupid hoops, these, these hoops to get these kids up to a level which they don’t need to be. (T3)

Support needed for recovery: a long-term view

Teacher participants’ perspectives about supporting children in the immediate aftermath of the lockdowns centred on the need to make up for missed opportunities for social development and emphasised time for play and social interaction as priority:

[T]hey have missed the most fundamental year of their life, you know, that play based learning, and now they’re in year one, where you have those constraints or all of the day’s tasks and everything where they have to sit at a desk, they've missed that massive time of play. (T3)

[T]hey just wanted to be with their friends. I think that was the biggest thing, we gave them a lot of chance to play when they came back, because that’s all they really want to do. (T1)

In the longer term, teachers emphasised the view that the pandemic had highlighted many existing issues with the school system, and recovery priorities were expressed as the need to find a better ‘balance between attainment and wellbeing’ (T7). It was notable that for almost all teacher participants, it was the lack of time for meeting the post-pandemic challenges that was of the greatest worry, rather than the impacts of the pandemic itself:

I think time really is the big thing, having time for social and emotional stuff to feel valued. […] But [the] amount that we need to cover in the curriculum doesn’t allow for that, there isn’t a lot of time to even have a pleasant conversation with a child, a lot of it’s very rushed. It’s very, you know, you’re constantly on a kind of conveyor belt of stuff that you have to get through. (T4)

The need to attend to wellbeing was seen to be particularly important given the worry that was stressed in many participants’ accounts that the full impacts of the pandemic are yet to be seen, described as a ‘time bomb waiting to appear’ (T7), suggesting the need for prioritising wellbeing support of all children, not just those displaying particular social and emotional difficulties.

Survey data findings

The psychological impacts of disruption

Parent participants emphasised the disruption to normal life wrought by the pandemic and the impacts this had on their children’s emotional and social wellbeing and behaviour. Negative changes included increased anxiety, in particular separation anxiety and worries related to the virus, as well as changes to sociability and outgoingness. Many parents described extremes of emotions and difficulties self-regulating, for example:

My daughter is now often emotional with mood swings between normality, frustration with and having a low tolerance with her younger sibling, bouts of separation anxiety, and also unexplained tears. (P58-G,yr5)

Several parents commented about the development of psychological symptoms such as new tics, stammering and changes in sleeping habits including bedwetting and nightmares. Others described their child as showing signs of depression, or as flat and disengaged, and several participants reported that their child had expressed suicidal thoughts:

My son’s mental health deteriorated rapidly due to lockdown. He expressed suicidal thoughts on occasion and was generally troubled. (P136-B,yr2)

Parent participants drew on a range of factors in their children’s immediate environment (disruption in routine; parents coping with the stresses of working fulltime alongside home-schooling; parents’ mental health) as well as the wider environment (constantly hearing about the pandemic in the news) as contributing to negative emotional and behavioural changes in their children. It was notable that it was often the interaction of specific characteristics of the child and his or her environment which shaped their particular response to the wider changes taking place. Parent participants described mixed impacts for children with additional needs. Changes to routine and the temporary withdrawal of supports from wider family and therapeutic services were seen to exacerbate many issues. However, parents also highlighted the benefits of time out from the stresses of normal school:

There were some benefits to the first lockdown. It meant that any stress associated with the school setting was alleviated and we could work with her full time on understanding and controlling the OCD. However, she also needs routine and struggled with the lack of structure without school. (P46-G,yr2)

The impacts of missed social interaction in the pandemic

For many parent participants, it was the impacts on their children’s opportunities for social interaction and development which caused the most worry. Despite the gains of more family time, limited social interaction beyond the family was linked to impacts on confidence and social development:

My son has really benefited from spending time with me, he was able to get 1-2-1 attention at times, however he didn’t have the social interaction with friends and missed this greatly, his confidence and knowledge of how to play with a group really suffered. (P114-B,yr2)

The presence of siblings presented a mixed picture in the data, dependent on multiple factors including age of sibling and size of living accommodation. The benefits of peer interaction facilitated by schools were portrayed as important both for social development and wellbeing by many parents:

Our son could be described as being a worrier and he struggles to separate. The lack of continuity in attending school, spending prolonged time at home has limited his opportunities to develop his confidence when he is not with his family. He has had limited opportunities to build new relationships of his own with peers which I think in normal times he would have had which would have boosted his self esteem […] We are worried about his happiness a great deal. (P6-B,yr1)

Age was an important factor referred to often; as in the quote above, negative social impact was observed often in younger children, whose parents noted the developmental impacts of missing almost half of pre-school or early years of school. For older primary children, the extent to which they were able to maintain social interactions was seen as a key factor for their wellbeing. Whilst loss of access to resources such as sport clubs and missing friends were often identified as having highly negative impacts, for some children these were mitigated to an extent by already established friendships and keeping in touch online.

Importance of relationships and engagement for wellbeing

The positive benefits of increased family time and time for non-academic activities were described as a powerful protective factor by many parent participants. As in the extract below by the parent of a Year One boy, many children thrived away from the school environment:

We saw his anxiety decrease dramatically and his happiness increase. He felt togetherness and safety being home with us and we saw his confidence increase as we spent lots of quality time together outside in nature engaging with the environment and through physical play. (P6-B,yr1)

The benefits of ‘one-to-one’ were mentioned frequently throughout the data with reference to time at home and the smaller class sizes for those in school which afforded more individual attention from teachers:

He found the more relaxed atmosphere and smaller class size hugely beneficial. Staff were more flexible to move away from the curriculum and do fun activities. (P42-B,yr5)

For those learning at home, the continuity of the relationship with the teacher was seen as key to their child’s engagement with school and overall wellbeing, highlighting the importance of the teacher–child relationship for some parents:

We have found this year that a good teacher can make a huge difference to the self esteem of a child. Our son has very strong attachment to his class teacher. She is an incredibly important person in his life - her good opinion means an awful lot […] The absence of this presence during lockdown was keenly felt. (P136-Byr2)

The priority given to social interaction by schools was perceived as a factor both in children’s positive mental wellbeing and engagement with learning:

The school appear to focus on relationships and play rather than academic content. This allowed him to keep mentally stable which made doing the normal ‘home’ learning all the easier. He was willing and enthused to do his reading and any extra work we put his way. (P72-B,Rec)

School-related anxiety

However, a competing theme in the data portrayed school as a source of anxiety for many children. Whilst many of these related to relatively surface-level anxieties over returning to school after the lockdowns, some were portrayed as more entrenched. From this perspective, the school changes associated with the pandemic were often conceptualised within the data as a relief for many children (as well as parents). Parent participants spoke of their children ‘thriving’ away from the pressure of normal school, both socially and academically:

My son thrived being at home when he was really struggling in school … made huge gains academically being at home having 1:1 tuition in an environment he felt safe in – home – compared to school where he is often sad and overwhelmed and not getting the support he needs in a class of 30 children. (P60-B,yr1)

As was the case for the Year One boy in this quote, the stressful nature of ‘normal’ school was a factor raised particularly with those children with additional needs. Additionally, parents of younger children reflected that increased time to play and learn at their own pace was beneficial for their wellbeing and allowed them to be ‘school ready’ when they returned:

She was in Reception as lockdown hit and seemed really stressed. I felt that two weeks into lockdown, my little girl has come back, she was essentially behaving normally again and not getting hung up on small details. She played lockdown one away and was school ready when year one came. She’s loved school since going back, versus a child that had a tummy ache every morning before lockdown. (P18-G,yr1)

Discussion

The disruption to schooling which accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unparalleled impact on our education system as a whole. Whilst the findings of the current research are representative of a relatively small sample of teachers and parents only, the shared patterns in the data suggest valuable reflections both for how children can be effectively supported in the aftermath of the pandemic and for the lessons that can be learned for reimagining primary education post-pandemic. Our research corroborated other research during the pandemic such as a study carried out by Moss et al. (2021) and the Sutton Trust (Pascal et al. 2020), which found significant detrimental impacts to many children’s mental health and wellbeing, particularly to children’s social wellbeing. However, as with other research during the pandemic (e.g. Oliver et al. 2021), our research also highlighted the benefits to time out from the school-as-usual system, particularly in the first lockdown, and as such presents an important critique of many aspects of ‘normal’ school.

Applying a bioecological perspective

Adopting Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model as a theoretical lens through which to conceptualise the findings focuses attention onto the question of what are the optimum conditions for encouraging positive ‘proximal processes’, or interactions between children and the persons or objects in their environment, through which children’s ‘genetic potentials’ might be actualised? (Bronfenbrenner and Cici 1994, 568). Or, in other words: What do children need to flourish?

Applying the bioecological perspective highlights how children’s experiences of the pandemic were shaped by multiple different factors, both internal and external to the child. Specific aspects of children’s home situation, including parents’ work situation and mental wellbeing, were mentioned throughout. It was notable that where significant negative impact was perceived, this tended to be where mental health difficulties were pre-existing, resonating with other research which emphasises that the pandemic exacerbated many vulnerabilities already present (Barnardos 2020; Kim and Asbury 2020).

It is well documented how the impacts of the pandemic have been and will continue to be felt most by those from already disadvantaged backgrounds (Pascal et al. 2020). However, since in our study sample, children from poorer backgrounds tended to be in school during the pandemic, pre-existing social disadvantage was mentioned in the data largely in relation to the benefits of having children from disadvantaged backgrounds in smaller class sizes within school. This points to the critical role that teachers and schools can play in addressing disadvantage and supports research with similar findings such as the Learning through Disruption study (Moss et al. 2021), which calls for far greater funding, particularly for those schools operating in high levels of disadvantage.

The role of schools in supporting children’s wellbeing

A key finding from our data emphasised the links between children’s social and emotional development and their capacity for effective learning. Thus, contrary to perceptions that focusing on wellbeing in schools competes with demands to raise academic standards (Coleman 2009; Ecclestone and Hayes 2009), the findings of this study back up existing research (Durlak et al. 2011; Gutman and Vorhaus 2012) to suggest that social and emotional health and academic learning must be seen as mutually supportive and intertwined. In particular, socioemotional wellbeing was portrayed as centrally important for children’s motivation, confidence around learning and behaviour.

The ethos of the particular school was seen to be a critical element here; whilst a supportive school ethos was seen to be an important protective factor, a strong pattern in the data highlighted a perception of the current school system as ‘unhealthy’ for children. As was found in other research in the pandemic (e.g. Heyworth et al. 2021), many children, including those with additional needs, were seen to flourish at home both educationally and personally. Children were often perceived to be happier and learn more effectively in the changed conditions, whether in home learning conditions in which they were able to feel safe and less stressed, or in calmer conditions within school with more one-to-one attention which the smaller class sizes enabled.

Two factors specifically were emphasised across the data as being crucial for wellbeing and positive mental health, which have important implications for rethinking priorities in a post-pandemic education system. Firstly, the importance of relationships, whether with family at home, interaction with friends or crucially in the context of the current research, greater time and attention from teachers in the smaller class sizes during the lockdowns. Significantly, the importance of relationships held true for others in the system, namely teachers, who often portrayed their capacity to create healthy learning environments as constricted or enabled by their interactions with others, including pupils, parents and senior leadership, which impacted on their own mental health. In this way, our findings highlighted the bidirectional role children played in shaping their settings, forwarding a view of children not as passive actors having things done to them, but rather as active agents at ‘the centre of the circles’ (Darling 2007).

Secondly, participants stressed the benefits of non-academic engagement such as play, creative activities and time spent in nature due to the relaxing of the curriculum in the first lockdown. The opportunity these offered for providing a sense of achievement was seen to be a key protective factor for children’s wellbeing, backing up evidence which supports the benefits of play and particularly outdoor play to mental health and wellbeing (Rogers 2022; Garden and Downes 2021). Whilst this is hardly a new argument, the need for its continual restatement is important in the face of what House and Loewenthal term the ‘‘too much too soon’ educational ideology [which] may be doing untold harm to a generation of children’ (2012, 7), which is all the more relevant given the government’s post-pandemic emphasis on academic catch-up (NEU 2021). It suggests that responding to the ‘crisis’ in children’s mental health and wellbeing might best take the form, not of additional therapeutic interventions, but of a restructuring of the system to allow much more time for non-academic activity and interest-led learning.

However, it is worth noting that the emphasis placed on non-academic engagement in the data was subtly different from the ‘child-centred’ pedagogy which has dominated early education research in recent decades (Langford, 2010). Rather than an individualised concept of learning in which teachers are seen as facilitators, it highlights instead a more relational view in which the flourishing of all those in the learning environment is seen as vital to children’s learning. Where children were seen to have flourished both in terms of wellbeing and academic engagement, this was portrayed as involving a communal and interactional dynamic, in which the parent, teacher and peers played a crucial role. In this way, the research supports the claims of Vygotsky (1978) that learning always takes place in a social context. This implies that educators are seen as crucial dialogical partners in the learning process, who are also affected by ‘proximal processes’. One of the key lessons to be taken from the lockdowns is the reciprocal triangle perceived by both teachers and parents between children’s sense of confidence and wellbeing, their capacity for learning, and the quality of time that was available to them from key adults. Changes in the school setting, such as smaller class sizes and reduced curriculum pressure, influenced teacher–pupil relations producing immediate visible effects.

The ‘Whole-school approach’: a critical perspective

School conditions – in particular, the amount to which wellbeing was prioritised – were identified as a crucial factor for enabling children’s healthy social and emotional development. This supports the ‘systemic SEL’ approach outlined earlier, which takes a whole school approach to fostering a nurturing and supportive school climate in which children feel safe and connected, and in which relationships are prioritised (Elias, Parker, and Rosenblatt 2006; Mahoney et al. 2020; Oberle et al. 2016). However, we argue that the focus on school conditions and the internal organisation of schools places far too much at the door of schools as needing to change, and not enough emphasis on the distal processes which dictate the massively restricted conditions under which schools are forced to operate.

One of the key factors pinpointed by research into the mixed success of whole school initiatives focuses on the failure of implementation, for example concerning the ‘will and skill’ of teachers (Humphrey, Lendrum, and Wigelsworth 2010, 3). However, what stood out in the accounts given by the teacher participants in the current study was that they were highly aware of the importance of prioritising the social and emotional aspects of learning, but often felt constrained in their attempts to do so. The small scale of the study dictates that the sample cannot be taken to be representative of the sector, and the self-selecting means by which teacher participants were recruited to participate in the study suggests they had a particular interest in children’s wellbeing. Indeed, several of the teachers drew attention to the wide disparity in teacher approach and noted the need for training for teachers to increase knowledge around mental health issues and how these play out in behaviours.

However, taken together, the key implication for the question of what ‘new normal’ education systems might look like post-pandemic is that an adequate response to the crisis in children’s mental health and wellbeing must be grounded in addressing the health of the system as a whole; in particular the lack of time and resources, and stress associated with curriculum and accountability pressure, which are seen as crucial factors reducing schools’ ability to foster conditions for supporting children’s healthy social and emotional development. The views expressed by the teachers we interviewed corroborate those of other studies (Education Support 2020; Perryman and Calvert 2019) which found high emphasis on performativity and accountability as crucial factors in teachers’ dissatisfaction with teaching and their reasons for leaving the profession. Thus, we argue that the whole school approach needs to be recalibrated to attend to fostering learning conditions in which teacher wellbeing, as well as pupil wellbeing, is prioritised.

Concluding remarks

The findings of our study support the view that our current education system is in important ways failing to support many children to flourish to their full potential by underlining the pressing political dimension to supporting children’s social and emotional development in schools. We have suggested that a lack of wellbeing is not primarily addressed through adding further mental health interventions and initiatives to the existing system, rather what is needed is a deeper transformation of the system in which schools are enabled to foster conditions which prioritise relationships and social interaction, recognition and non-academic engagement. Thus, in the light of the current emphasis on children’s mental health, we call for a critical approach to the implementation of wellbeing policies in school, and for greater attention to the voices of educators themselves in creating learning conditions which support the flourishing of teachers, pupils and their families.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).