My Child Is Leaving Year 6 During The Pandemic

Last Updated on: 7th June 2021, 10:44 pm

Leaving Year 6

It has really been a strange year and a half for kids and now Tilly is leaving year 6. So much of the school year has been spent at home being home educated by parents who don’t know what the fuck they are doing. I am one of those parents! During the first lockdown, when nobody knew what they were doing, it was okay. We did our best we home educated with the resources we had at home. We taught our kids, stuff that we knew and home ed seemed to be a breeze.

The kids went back to school in September and after 6 months off, they were all at different levels. Tilly took the Kent test (11+) but without the extra guidance, I found it difficult to get her ready. She only wanted to go to the local comp anyway, so it was her choice to do the test.

Then there was a second lockdown, where they continued to go to school. But by the third lockdown, and the second wave of Covid in full swing. We found ourselves in the middle of home ed again.

Struggles With Home Ed

During the second school closure, the home ed was more school-led and it was harder. All of that stuff that we learned at primary school, that we thought we would never use again. Well, We had to use it again! I was lucky because I had Kim at home to help with the home ed. Otherwise, I would have had to send her to school to keep up. She finally went back to school in March, her uniform was too small. But I didn’t think it was worth buying more uniform because we didn’t know if the school would stay open for long!

Tilly was so glad to be back at school, her mental health has really suffered since the start of Covid. And like many other school kids, she missed her friends. But reality hit, that she only had a couple of terms left at school. Time seemed to have jumped from the start of year 5 to finishing year 6. So much time at school has been missed because of the global pandemic.

The Last Term

Here we are in her last term of year 6. There is no prom for the kids this year. There is no holiday away with her classmates and there is no end of year 6 assembly for her. I am going to make the last few weeks as special as I can for her. We have designed a leavers book for her to get her friends to sign. I designed it on Canva and sent it to Amazon to print off. She has also got some awesome activities coming up, organised by the school. Not quite the same as a week away, but she can create memories with her friends before they head off to different schools.

I don’t think I feel ready for her to go to secondary school. I think I would like her to repeat the year to catch up. But I guess that all of the children leaving year 6 are in the same boat. They will all be at the same level when they get to year 7. And they will have all experienced the same life through Covid.

Feeling Robbed

Tilly has waited so long for the year 6 celebrations, she has talked about it for years. ‘When I am in the year 6 assembly’ and ‘When I have my year 6 prom’. That’s all I have heard for years, and now Covid has robbed her of it all. Instead her year 6 is spent taking covid tests and catching up with things she has missed.

Of course she isn’t the only child to miss out. There is a whole generation of kids that have missed out on taking exams, missing proms, and suffering from mental health problems and anxiety. Covid has robbed our kids of so much!