As we start to plan for a world post-Covid, many countries are turning to actions and policies to protect vulnerable children. In the UK, according to the BBC, this has been in the form of providing laptops, devices and data packages for those learning at home and for others, enabling them to continue learning at school. Anne Longfield, England’s children’s commissioner, has demanded that Boris Johnson put children at the heart of government policy and plans “centre stage”. While earlier in the pandemic schools were closed and pubs open the UK government have addressed some of these nonsensical policies and schools will now be first to reopen. The chairman of the Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon said that children were facing a “torrid barrage of lost learning and a new frontier of vulnerabilities”. Many actions need to be taken in the UK and elsewhere to ensure that this last year is not entirely lost for children in terms of their learning advances, academic achievements and in the state of their mental health. This will be critical in terms of moving, at some stage, to the new normal.
