No less than 42% of parents say they perceive a delay in the development of their children due to the pandemic and the majority say they are worried about their academic success.
Even though confinement and curfews are no longer the order of the day, very many parents have concerns about the well-being of their children, with 64% saying they are concerned about their mental health, i.e. nearly the same proportion as last year.
This is what reveals a study by the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) which focuses on the perceptions of parents on this pandemic which dragged on. This statistical portrait was taken in the period from August 20 to September 15, around the start of the school year, at a time when the cases were significantly lower than now.
“Academic success during a pandemic was a major concern for parents: 68% admitted to being rather or very concerned about this subject”, we can read.
In this regard, 42% of parents were confident at the start of the school year “that the measures planned by the government for vulnerable students or those showing educational backwardness would be adequate”.
Anguish and stress
About one in five parents (21%) believed their child or children were anxious about going back to school because of the pandemic. This is a lot, but less, all the same than the start of the 2020 school year, when a third of parents felt this anxiety in their offspring.
Stress was particularly felt in families in the Montreal region (27% versus 15% of residents of other census metropolitan areas).
That being said, a large majority of parents (76%) felt that schools and child care centers were well prepared to protect the health of their children.
For or against the mask? Here, the rise in cases could have changed parents’ minds, but at the start of the school year, 58% of them were in favor of wearing a mask in secondary schools, but less in primary (42%).
At the start of the school year, 62% of parents “wanted schools to operate as before the pandemic, that is to say without any measures”.
Parents with a high school diploma or less were more likely to agree, “as well as those who were not worried about the coronavirus or adhering to conspiracy theories.”
Impact on young people around the world
While the pandemic has been hit hard by young people here, they should fare better than those in less fortunate countries.
In low- and middle-income countries, writes Agence France-Presse, the percentage of children not able to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10 – which was already over 50% before the pandemic – could quickly reach nearly 70% due to class closures and poorer quality distance education.
The COVID-19 crisis has crippled education systems around the world. Twenty-one months later, schools remain closed for millions of children, and others may never return to school.
Jaime Saavedra, Education Officer at the World Bank
“The loss of knowledge that his children undergo is morally unacceptable,” he added. It can have “devastating effects on the productivity, incomes and well-being of this generation of children and youth, their families, and the economies of the world.”
According to Agence France-Presse reports, “the generation of young people currently in school is at risk of losing nearly 17 trillion US dollars in income due to the closures of schools linked to the pandemic, that is to say more than initially planned ”, the World Bank and UN agencies are alarmed.
With Agence France-Presse