At every stage since the start of the pandemic, decisions across education and childcare have been informed by the scientific and medical evidence -- both on the risks of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, transmission and illness, and on the known risks to children and young people not attending education settings -- balancing public health and…

School closures due to COVID-19 have been predicted to have a large impact on pupils' learning and wellbeing. Systematic evidence about teachers' perceptions of what challenges their pupils have faced, and how they have been addressing these challenges, will be important for post-pandemic planning. We interviewed 24 teachers from English state…

The COVID pandemic temporarily altered the functioning of all sections of society. In England, it led to major disruption in the teacher education sector leading to curtailed training in schools and a rapid shift to alternative approaches to teaching and learning. By the 2021-2022 academic year, it was hoped that activity would return to a level…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought abrupt changes and disruption to the lives of children and young people. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore how participants navigated national lockdowns (including school closures), social restrictions, and the reintegration back into pre-pandemic routines. Twenty children, young people…

Telepsychiatry has been rapidly adopted to help control the spread of coronavirus. Clinicians have raised concerns over this for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The remote delivery of psychological interventions in particular requires further attention as their in-person delivery has autism spectrum disorder--associated…

Purpose: This paper reports the evaluation of an ongoing intervention, the GROW Programme, aimed at meeting the needs of 15-18-year-old pupils who were unable to attend school in England for periods during 2020-2021. The aim of the paper is to theorize the underlying basis of practice in such a lockdown context to inform future responses.…

Contextual approaches to high quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) seek to capture the complexity of children's lives, developing pedagogical approaches that are responsive to children's needs and interests. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a complex layer to the question of what constitutes quality ECEC. A mixed methods…

This article is unique because it fills a significant gap among COVID-19 related educational research in three ways. First, it analyses data from face-to-face interviews with 23 children, whilst most COVID-19 related research has been based on online data collection methods. Second, it involves 'lower-attaining' children who were already part of…

Loneliness in childhood and adolescence is currently measured using questionnaires and checklists. The most used questionnaires for youth are psychometrically limited, partly due to the absence of the young person's voice from the measurement development process. Given this gap in the literature, the current study explored primary-school aged…

In this article, we examine education policymaking in England during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the period from 2020 to 2022. We argue that the pandemic, while obviously damaging materially, economically and psychologically, seemed to have provided a rare opportunity for a step change, a chance to recalibrate and reconsider values assumed…

This is a companion-piece to my account (published in "FORUM" 62/3) of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected teachers in Norfolk schools. I give a brief overview of the past academic year, then draw on interviews with 21 secondary teachers to highlight certain general themes, before considering particular characteristics of each of the past…

Research demonstrates the pedagogical value in stressing the 'real world' applicability of subject-specific content in a psychology programme. The move to online teaching prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic has given way to more creative uses of technology to enhance the student experience. In this paper, we demonstrate the value in applied…

This article explores how the UK Conservative Government's Department for Education is taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to restructure higher education in England towards labour-power production. There is nothing new in UK governments seeking to reshape higher education for labour-power development. But under cover of apparent concern for…

School performance measures are published annually in England to hold schools to account and to support parental school choice. This article reviews and evaluates the 'Progress 8' secondary school accountability system for state-funded schools. We assess the statistical strengths and weaknesses of Progress 8 relating to: choice of pupil outcome…

The health costs of in-person schooling during the pandemic, if any, fall primarily on the families of students, largely due to the fact that students significantly outnumber teachers. Data from North Carolina, Wisconsin, Australia, England, and Israel covering almost 80 million person-days in school help assess the magnitude of the fatality risks…