Babies born in 2020 started life in the strange world of lockdown in a small bubble of people with faces hidden behind masks. Social experiences, such as seeing extended family, trips to the playground or mother and baby groups, could not happen. And struggling public services meant infants were likely to miss out on face-to-face appointments with a health visitor who might have been able to spot developmental difficulties early.
Those babies are now four years old, and arriving at school for the first time in England this week. Experts say teachers should be braced to encounter – and tackle – problems ranging from poor speech and language development to social and emotional difficulties.
Similar problems have been seen in children who were very young during the pandemic and are already in the system.
“We’ve had an increase in reception children biting one another, throwing things, running off, spitting,” said the headteacher of a primary school in north-west England. He added they were often frustrated or struggled with taking turns, sharing, or following routines and listening in class.
“They don’t have the vocabulary to express what they are feeling,” he said. “They’re about two years behind when they arrive.”
Louisa Reeves, director of policy and evidence at the charity Speech and Language UK, said that, while most babies would get up and walk without parents practising with them, learning to talk and interact required more engagement.
“Ideally babies need to be exposed to many different people who talk to them, and have a broad range of experiences,” she said. “That didn’t happen in the pandemic.”
Masks meant “they weren’t even seeing people’s facial expressions, which help you to pick up whether they are joking or cross”.
Reeves said busy parents often anticipated their baby’s needs and cut verbal communication short. If a baby pointed at a drink, for example, the parent might give it to them without using the word for it.
She said she worried that many families did not know how vital talking to babies and toddlers was. “The red health book everyone is given when they have a baby focuses on weight, nutrition and vaccinations. It should also stress the importance of talking.”
Reeves added that many of the Covid babies would have missed obligatory checks at two and a half years, or had them conducted over the phone or by questionnaire, during which some warning signs could have been missed.
Her charity has found 1.9 million children in the UK – one in five – are struggling with speech and language. The problem had already been building before the pandemic, especially in disadvantaged areas.
The charity’s research found more than half of teachers felt they had not had enough training to tackle problems. “You don’t learn how to teach talking. That’s just mad,” Reeves said.
Katrina Morley, chief executive of Tees Valley Education trust, which runs four primary schools in some of the region’s most deprived areas, said research showed that, if you grew up in a poorer area, your vocabulary would on average be about 3,000 words smaller than that of your peers in wealthier areas. This mattered, she said, because “the limits of your language are the limits of your world”.
“If you see an early years child making a rocket and going to the moon they truly believe it. But if you can’t communicate, where do you start?”
She added that, after years of cuts, there were not enough professionals for the volume of need. Thanks to a nationwide shortage of speech and language therapists, if a child does secure an external assessment, the result will typically be a programme for the school to run with parents. “When and how do you fit that in?”
Funding is tight but Morley’s trust has fought to retain pastoral and welfare staff to work with families.
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It helps parents who may be juggling shift jobs, facing mental health problems, or struggling to put food on the table and pay bills, to develop good habits with their young children.
Staff talk about everything from nutrition, teeth-cleaning and toilet training, to the importance of regular bedtimes. Many homes will not have books, and many local and mobile libraries have closed, so the trust sends books home, and guides parents on shared reading.
“If parents are self-conscious or illiterate, they can access a video of a teacher reading the story and share it that way,” she said.
Ruth Swailes, who advises schools on early years education, said the Conservative government had not helped matters by encouraging all schools in spring 2020 to buy into an accredited phonics scheme, and later that year recommending that schools should spend an hour a day on phonics learning.
“These children had been through this unique experience and often missed so much, but teachers were basically being told they must knuckle down and teach phonics,” she said.
Swailes works with schools on teaching social and emotional skills, such as taking turns and sharing.
If children don’t have these skills, or are behind on their language or physical development, “it doesn’t matter how good you are as a teacher, the child won’t make the progress they could”, she said.
“We are seeing more success where schools are being brave and saying, ‘No, this is what we need for our children right now, and we can’t push formal teaching too soon.’”
Julian Grenier, who works on early years teaching at the Education Endowment Foundation, said confronting these issues was vital, because disadvantaged children were already, on average, 4.5 months behind by the end of reception class.
“You might think it doesn’t matter because they are still so young,” he said.
“But that gap has doubled by the end of primary and doubles again by the end of secondary school.”
He remained hopeful about the Covid babies’ futures, saying that we now know a lot more about what helps young children learn key skills. “Reception teachers and teaching assistants are incredible, and usually love their jobs, even when they are on their knees with exhaustion.”