Generation COVID and the Impact of Lockdown

Many lives have been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic and school-aged students are no exception. The closures of schools and disruption to learning will have an impact as they go forward in their lives. In this article, I set out the various school year groups in England who have seen both their learning disrupted and other extracurricular activities curtailed, both inside and outside of the school setting. Many students' learning will have been significantly hindered by the disruptions and some of these will be students whose life circumstances had already placed them at a disadvantage before the pandemic. Others still may have thrived under the unusual circumstances. Paving the way towards recovering lost learning requires a clear understanding of the nature of these different student groups. Exploration of the various different groups of students leads to the need to provide research evidence to underpin action taken in the future to mitigate against the issues experienced by this generation.