L I FE AFTER LOCKDOWN
brilliantly), schools are back, bubbles have popped, and whole-school activities such as assemblies can take place again. And, while children with Covid-19 must still spend ten days isolating, their friends can stay at school, as long as they continue to test negative. We’ve had a stark lesson about our young people’s mental health that’s made it overwhelmingly clear that more has to be done to support them. In 2019, 6,500 young people in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough were reported to have mental health issues – and that was before the pandemic struck. They also had to wait a minimum of three weeks before getting an initial assessment, according to a report from the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). As Ofsted flags the link between time out of the classroom and an increase in challenging behaviour from pupils, it’s also evident that teachers have had an incredibly difficult time. They were given a front-line role, required to deliver top-class education online and in-school, sometimes swapping between the two with minimal notice. That’s no longer the case, but the effects linger. A survey by a teaching union earlier this year found almost one in three teachers had sought help for physical or
CAMBR IDGE EDUCAT ION GUIDE 11
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