Yesterday I spoke in a debate on Education Catch-Up and Mental Health Recovery after the Pandemic. It is a positive development that we're talking about mental health, particularly in children dealing with the return to school after the closures and disruption through the pandemic. One of the hardest policies to support, in trying to manage Covid-19, was closing schools to the majority of children.
I have visited a number of schools cross the constituency in the last few weeks. The issues fed back to me on attainment, behaviour and mental health were notable. It is amazing how many of my primary schools said that when children, particularly the youngest, returned, they were unable to share space, toys and resources.
I have seen various hugely impressive approaches to this issue. Bolsover Infant School has taken a back-to-basics approach and I saw last week how that is working. Palterton Primary School has just won an award for its use of physical education. One could see from the behaviour in the school that it was having a huge impact. Other creative ideas, such as the use of forest schools have been used by Shirland Primary School and a primary school in Langwith. They have been shown to have a hugely positive impact.
The scale of the challenge facing schools and headteachers is incredibly difficult, but we do need to make sure that this is a priority, because areas such as Bolsover were already behind educationally and it is vital that we catch up, and that is a real challenge.
You can watch my speech here https://youtu.be/qADTaEQujPQ
or read here https://hansard.parliament.uk/.../405F870D.../Government’SEducationCatch-UpAndMentalHealthRecoveryProgrammes?highlight=fletcher#contribution-E3C30260-ABDD-4F95-A747-0F8B8EA1BD4E
