This article was updated 26th May 2021
How did your child cope with school closures?
The last two school years have been like no others since the end of World War II with so much school missed due to COVID closures and absences. Some children took to online classes well, others struggled and some completely failed to engage. Now children are back at school, there are all the challenges of getting back into good learning routines, catching up with work missed and dealing with ongoing if sporadic disruption.
Add to all this, the fact that this generation of children have had to deal with unprecedented levels of anxiety as a result of living through a pandemic and it’s fair to say that school children and their parents are in a unique position. There’s been much debate in the media as to whether school holidays should be shortened or even cancelled to make up for lost learning time and parents have the unenviable task of working out the best way to help support their children after almost a year of home-schooling.
The role of private tuition during the holidays
Most children will undoubtedly welcome and still need the summer break to help them relax and unwind after the events of the last 18 months. But this year, more than ever before, it’s going to be important to keep up a certain amount of learning during the holidays to either help children if they’ve been struggling or have fallen behind or to continue to support them if they’ve been doing well. With this in mind, here are three reasons why private tuition during the summer holidays could make all the difference:
1. Summer learning loss
Each summer, we talk about learning loss (or the summer slide as it’s also known) which is the loss of academic skills and knowledge over the course of the summer holidays. This is something that’s been widely recognised as a phenomenon since the early 1990s.
It’s a bit like going to the gym. If you go regularly and work hard, you soon start to reap the benefits. But if you take two months off, your fitness levels quickly drop! The brain is a muscle, and so it also needs regular work outs to keep it fit.
In a normal year, it’s been estimated that children can lose up to 30% of their maths, English and reading skills over the summer break and research published by Cambridge University indicates that the summer break can hit children moving up to secondary school particularly hard, finding “30% per cent of students made no progress in mathematics, and 50 per cent made no progress in English or science” in Year 7, as a result.
Learning loss compounded
But 2021 is not a normal year, and educational organisations across the globe have already expressed concern about “intensified social-emotional, as well as academic, learning loss” as a result of Covid 19.
In fact, NWEA (a research-based, not-for-profit organization that supports students and educators worldwide) has produced a brief report on their predictions of COVID-19 learning loss already. Their main predictions estimate that students will return in the Autumn with roughly 70% of their typical learning gains in reading and with less than 50% of their typical learning gains in mathematics. And that’s before you factor in any additional fall back as a result of the summer holidays.
Just a couple of hours makes all the difference
More positive is research that shows that just a couple of hours of learning per week can prevent summer learning loss - and this is where summer tuition programmes come into their own. Focusing on the core skills required as part of the school curriculum, our programmes are designed around your child. We pick up any areas where your child may need some extra help or could do with a bit more of a challenge, ensuring your child catches up in respect of any Covid learning loss as well as ensuring they don’t suffer further learning disruption as a result of the summer holidays.
The programmes are structured but fun and they also take away the need for you to do any more home-schooling.
2. Building your child’s confidence and helping with anxiety
Confidence is everything. Without it, children can lose their motivation to learn, and can struggle to face some of the many challenges that they have to deal with at school, whether academic or social. And once again, Covid 19 has had a massive impact on the confidence and anxiety levels of many children.
One of the benefits of the MagiKats’ summer private tuition programmes is that children experience both success and satisfaction, building their self-confidence and self-esteem. They also get back into the habit of learning and develop their social skills through meeting children from other schools and with other backgrounds. This interaction promotes cooperation and cultivates the discipline of respecting others, as well as helping to boost confidence, all of which helps manage anxiety levels as the start of the school term approaches.
The result is that when they go back to school, what they’ve achieved and the praise they’ve received over the summer means rather than falling behind, they’ve actually progressed, and they’ll also have built and improved their self-confidence. Which gives them the best possible start to a new academic year.
3. Helping you get back to work
Whether you were furloughed, made redundant or worked through the various lockdowns, the challenges of home-schooling whilst also trying to cope with the other stresses and strains of a pandemic have been significant. Now, parents need to get back to work and try and recover some sense of economic and social stability.
We’re very conscious that the last thing many parents need after months of being at home, is to now have to juggle work around the school holidays and spend precious down time trying to encourage children to do some summer schoolwork. Alternatively, you may be struggling to think of ways to entertain the children or engaged in a daily battle of trying to get your children away from their computer games.
The truth is holidays can be enormously stressful but whatever your situation, the MagiKats summer private tuition programme helps give the holiday weeks some structure, giving parents some valuable time and space and getting the children away from their computers and giving them something fun and stimulating to do.
And yes, we do mean fun! Because we’ve worked very hard to design programmes that are fun so that your children won’t even realise they’re learning as they work! And our programmes are a great deal more affordable and convenient than a day out in London or a trip to a theme park!
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE MAGIKATS SUMMER PROGRAMME?
We provide continued private tuition programmes during the holidays for anyone aged 4 to 16 years of age. We offer extra support in English and maths – two of the most critical subjects for any school pupil. But that’s by no means all we do.
This summer, we’re focusing on rebuilding skills and providing a launchpad for learning that will see our students return to school with restored enthusiasm. Our new programme for 2021 is structured to help every individual child or teenager with just what they need – whether it’s an academic or pastoral focus. You can read all about our Summer Programme 2021 here.
