Beyond the Academia: The Cost of School and College Closures

Primary Schools reopen their doors this week for some year groups following 10 weeks of closure. There’s less sign of colleges and Universities doing the same as yet.

Cambridge University already confirmed that lectures for the next academic year will all be online due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the risk of a second peak this winter has educational institutions globally braced for further closures over the coming months or even longer.

The academic impact of educational institutions being closed is obvious. Exams are already cancelled this academic year and less face time with teachers could leave some students struggling to meet their learning objectives for the academic year. But the potential costs of this actually go far further than mere academic ones.

Sport and Physical Activity

For some students, the majority of their physical activity comes through their school or college.

Couple that with sports across the board having been off and people having to secure their entertainment indoors and we’re likely to see less physical activity and more screen time. Entertainment is increasingly likely to take the form of video games and TV.

It’s unknown what the likely impact on health might be. But with an obesity crisis already costing our healthcare system heavily, this is one area that could be a real damaging one for the health of young people.

Emotional Wellbeing and Socialising

Lockdown is tough. Family relationships can become strained and any tensions previously there are likely to be magnified in an environment where everyone is home for extended periods of time.

Couple that with the fact people are unable to visit friends or enjoy the social gatherings they may have had and not seeing friends and teaching staff on a day to day basis in their education setting actually becomes a bigger deal.

It has been well publicised that those classed as vulnerable face risks while schools are closed. But actually, the emotional wellbeing of students across all year groups and from all backgrounds could be affected by Coronavirus.

Higher Education Uptake

One as yet unknown is what the long term impact will be on education. One hypothesis is that as universities appear to shift towards less face to face interaction and further Coronavirus peaks threaten in person education, fewer students may seek to take up higher education places in the coming years.

Education on the Whole

Coronavirus is the biggest disruption to education since World War II. For teaching staff and students of all ages, this has been an astronomical event that has suspended education as we know it for a lengthy period.

With the threat of Coronavirus looming over the long term and no guarantees of a vaccine, social distancing measures are likely to be required for some time yet, altogether changing how some institutions will interact with their students.

We cannot be sure what the impact of this will be or whether we’ll even see long term positive/negative change . But this monumental pandemic is likely to be something we look back on for many years to come and point to as the reason for long term changes within schools, colleges, universities and how we teach on the whole.