Inverness pupil’s ‘six years of struggle’ in the wake of Covid lockdown
Covid has been back in the news, specifically the effect of lockdown on young people as, among others, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently gave evidence to the official inquiry looking at that very topic.
He repeated an apology made previously for things the government got wrong at the time, but said he was proud of what teachers and schools did to cope with the "unbelievably difficult" circumstances.
Former UK government education secretary Gavin Williamson also gave evidence to the inquiry, saying in his view the government had made an error in "sticking to the plan" of trying to keep schools open in March 2020.
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Of course lockdown rules north and south of the border were not exactly the same throughout the pandemic and impacts vary widely from family to family, person to person, but the general feeling seems to be that, if another pandemic was to hit no authority would perhaps be quite as quick to lock down schools in particular, given what seems to have been a significant impact on young people’s educational journey as well as their personal mental health.
Charleston Academy pupil Evelyn Gibson (15), who was on work experience with The Inverness Courier this week, has shared what lockdown was like for her - straddling,as it did, that crucial crossover point as she moved from primary to secondary school:
When I was initially told that we were going to be off school for two weeks due to Covid, it almost felt like a relief.
As a 10-year-old getting told you don’t need to come into school - it's like a celebration.
Obviously, though, it turned out to be far longer than a fortnight.
Two weeks turned into a month, a month turned into two months, which in turn became six months before some restrictions were finally lifted.
At first being able to work from home was like a luxury. No, I wasn’t able to sleep in until 10am, but being able to do my schoolwork from bed, still in my pyjamas, was amazing!
What was also good about it was I could do all my work in the morning and have the afternoon free.
However, as we got further into lockdown, boredom set in and I even began to feel drained in some ways.
I started really struggling with maths and wasn’t able to get the support I needed through a computer screen.
When we came out of the first lockdown and I started P7 it was something of a relief. Being able to socialise in person felt great and throughout those four months my maths slowly improved.
But then came the second lockdown, right after Christmas 2020.
Back to online work it was, for another few months.
Though not as long as the first lockdown it was, in my opinion, the worst of the two.
I started having issues with my Chromebook, as a result of which I wasn't able to do much work online.
Instead I had to get all of the tasks sent to me by my friend, write them up then send my friend pictures of my work so they could post it on the Google classroom.
On the plus side we were able to pick a limited number of days per week to actually go into school, so I was able to socialise to some extent.
My maths started getting worse again, though, to the point where I was struggling to do basic division that my friends would probably do with their eyes closed.
It was a relief to finally get back in to the classroom, for what was left of P7, but before I knew it I was off to secondary school.
In high school we had face coverings and social distancing, but I got to make new friends despite the restrictions and everything was going well until the inevitable happened - I caught Covid.
That meant two weeks off school and missing a friend’s party.
I also missed out on a lot of school work, which saw me falling behind - again.
In the years that followed I failed maths exams twice and it’s only now, nearing the end of 2025, that I’m at last starting to feel in any way comfortable with the subject.
That has been six years of struggle; six years of thinking I couldn’t do it; six years of stress and worry.
Some of my friends found lockdown the best thing ever because most of our work didn't have strict deadlines as long as it was in for the end of the school day.
On the flip side, I think others struggled with certain subjects, like me, and were not able to get the help they needed.
I think if lockdown was to happen again now, or in the near future, I wouldn’t cope as well, as I’m now taking exams and I think it would be severely detrimental to miss out on time in class.