Sharing Student Projects

Following school closures and disruptions, there have been efforts to bridge the academic attainment gap which has been further exacerbated by the pandemic (EEF, 2022). However, very few studies have been conducted to explore, from a qualitative angle, the perceived impact of school closures and disruptions on children’s SEWB from SD communities. The aim of this project was to explore the perceived impact of school closures and disruptions on SD primary school pupils. A qualitative approach was taken to capture perceptions and voice of primary school staff members’ lived experiences of the school closures as well as recommendations they have for future educational practitioners to consider. A total of eight participants participated in remote Zoom interviews reflecting two primary schools in Manchester and one in Liverpool. Two teaching assistants, three teachers, two headteachers and an inclusion manager participated in the study. RTA was used to analyse the interviews, revealing two themes ‘perceived challenges and personal narratives’ and ‘school as a support system’. The first theme aimed to capture the lived experiences of school staff during and following school closures and the unique challenges that their schoolchildren and families faced as a result of SD. Perceived challenges affecting the SEWB of children included play deprivation, long periods of social isolation in poor housing conditions, increased parental stress, low exposure to English and food insecurity. These challenges were perceived to have affected children’s ability to manage their emotions, their peer relationships and communication and language skills. The second theme encompasses the response to these perceived challenges, in that schools responded as a support system offering both instrumental and emotional support to children and their families. Staff recalled implementing targeted support, emotion-coaching strategies and adopting trauma-informed approaches. However, staff also recalled financial and organisational barriers to implementation of targeted support. Recommendations for addressing these challenges include improving parent-school relationships, increasing access to sensory provision and educational trips and embedding a whole-school culture of trauma-informed practice and emotion coaching. These findings fit in with the wider literature regarding the negative impact of SD on SEWB outcomes in children (Masarik & Conger, 2017; Rahal & Stigler, 2022). Additionally, the findings offer support to the existing literature on the negative impact of school closures and disruptions (Marchant et al., 2021; Tso et al., 2020; Vallejo-Slocker et al., 2020). To conclude, whilst these findings are not causal, they should be interpreted as offering valuable insight into the unique systemic challenges that these communities face and how these lived experiences have been perceived to have negatively impacted SEWB outcomes. Given the mental health crisis that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, these findings offer insights into the mechanisms that precede future mental health difficulties. It is clear that school staff have advocated through the pandemic for SD children, therefore, their recommendations hold saliency and value in what could be put in place to address these disparities.

As we now turn to a post-pandemic reality, the literature alludes to the fact that a pre-pandemic schooling structure cannot continue if education policy and practice are to address the academic and SEWB disparities in SD children. Therefore, the impact of this research is that it can allow for an insight into what can be put in place to support various stakeholders. As the research concerns the SEWB of SD children, this research can benefit them directly as efforts can be made to address the challenges that they face and shed light on their lived experiences. Particularly, as child SEWB has become central to inclusive education practice and research, it is important to understand how these learners experience their interrelated worlds of school, family and community (Corcoran & Kaneva, 2021). Moreover, whilst this research has focused on children’s wellbeing outcomes, the literature indicates parental wellbeing is important in being able to support their children socially and emotionally. Therefore, this research is important for highlighting the role that parents have played during the pandemic and how the cultivation of a parent-school relationship can benefit the child. To ensure effective inclusion practice, there is a requirement to involve families and wider communities beyond schools (Lewis et al., 2019). Additionally, these findings were helpful in understanding how schools can respond as a support system to address the short and long-term effects of school closures and disruptions. School staff working in SD communities have an additional challenge of addressing these barriers with very little resources and financial support. Thus, illuminating the voices of adults who have had the most contact with this marginalised group can allow for educational policymakers to be more informed in addressing the context-specific barriers of implementing effective SEWB strategies within educational settings.