Coronavirus (COVID-19): children, young people and families - evidence summary - December 2020

5. Education, learning and employment

Connect Parent/Carer Survey: Back at School
Source: Connect
Date: November 2020

The latest Connect parent online survey ran from 17 Sep to 31 Oct and was completed by 572 parents across 29 local authorities. This was an open survey and the findings are not therefore representative of all parents in Scotland. The survey includes questions on communications between school and home, access to digital devices, whether children have been at school, changes in school and impacts of those changes. Key findings:

• The majority of respondents (70%) feel school is going well for their child. However, nearly a third did not feel as positive.
• 66% of respondents had not been asked about their child's learning in lockdown and 79% had not been asked about their family's experience during lockdown.
• Nearly 40% of respondents think communications from school to home could be improved or are poor.
• Parental confidence in their child's learning appears very mixed with similar proportions of respondents feeling confident and not confident.
• Just over 30% of respondents' children needed a digital device for online learning (69% did not); the picture on whether these had made been available was mixed.

The COVID-19 Education Recovery Group (CERG) publishes a weekly snapshot of COVID-19-related data for children and young people, and the local authority school-based workforce. The most recent CERG update (at the time of writing) was published on 19 November. The percentage of non-attendance openings recorded as pupils not in school for COVID-19 related reasons has increased from 2.5% on 6^th Oct to 4.4% as of 17^th Nov. This amounts to approximately 30,824 pupils who were not in school either all or part of the day because of COVID-19 related reasons. 78,338 children were attending a childcare setting and 2,459 had a Covid-19 related absence (based on a 52% survey response rate as of 17^th Nov).

Coronavirus (COVID-19): Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children's Issues - evidence on children, schools, early learning and childcare settings and transmission from COVID-19 - summary report
Source: Scottish Government
Date: 18 Nov 2020

An evidence paper has been produced by the COVID-19 Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children's Issues, looking at the risks posed by the virus to pupils and staff and the benefits to children and young people of schools remaining open. The paper suggests the rate of coronavirus-related sickness among pupils is low across Scotland, at around 0.1% of pupils at 12 November. There was no direct evidence that transmission of the virus within schools plays a significant role in driving rates of infection among children. Meanwhile the evidence suggests closing schools would present a serious risk of harm to the wellbeing of children and young people, particularly those who are vulnerable.