22
The Economist
April 22nd 2023
Britain
Mental health has worsened, among
children and parents alike. A survey car
ried out by the National Health Service
(
NHS
) last year concluded that one in six
children aged 716 had a “probable mental
disorder”, up from one in nine in 2017.
Steve Bladon, a former primaryschool
head whose own daughter has developed
anxieties that prevent her from attending
school, says it is not realistic to think that
youngsters can all simply “crack on as they
used to”. He says living through the pan
demic has “changed” many children.
Attitudes to schooling have shifted, too.
Before the pandemic children generally ac
cepted that schoolgoing was inevitable,
even when it was causing considerable
stress. Long bouts of remote learning, on
adults’ orders, have shaken that assump
tion. Some autistic children found they
were much better suited to studying at
home than in school, reckons Ms Marsh;
for those pupils in particular, going back to
the old ways has been a wrench. Parents
are more inclined than before to keep chil
dren at home if they sneeze or sniffle. A lot
of parents now spend time working from
home, notes Timo Hannay of SchoolDash,
a data provider. That has reduced the in
convenience of a child not being in class.
Improving information about the pro
blem is a government priority. Before the
pandemic national absence rates were
usually reported only once a term, and
with a big lag. Now officials from the De
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