If something can be learned from the Coronapandemie, it is that with the next large -scale virus outbreak the interests of young people should be better taken into account. The closure of education, which mainly served to protect vulnerable elderly people against the virus, had a downside. Children and young people had to stay at home for a long time and take lessons behind a screen, the contact with peers was denied them. The negative consequences on their development hardly played a role in policy.
That the Lockdowns have had an impact on children and young people may be concluded five years later, even though the studies are not entirely clear. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine to what extent the falling learning results, the increased need for psychological help and the unrest in classes are still due to the coronation time. As time passes, other influences can also play. Moreover, there was already falling learning results and rising psychological need among young people before Corona.
It seems that the conclusion of educational institutions is not a favorable factor in the development process of young people that you could come up with even without research. Yet that was not the mindset which prevailed in March 2020. On the contrary: the call to close the schools sounded loudly in those days. That was also quite understandable, given the scanty information that was available at the time about the advancing virus.
It cannot be blamed for the then cabinet that in that very beginning it was mainly concerned about the elderly. But after the summer of 2020, concerns about the negative consequences of compulsory home education grew. Then the importance of youth should have taken more into account in the corona policy.
Nevertheless, the schools closed completely for the second time in December. With a virus such as the Spanish flu, which mainly met young adults, that would have been logical. At Covid-19 it was now known that children were not the most important distributors. The school closure was primarily intended to enforce the working of parents from home.
Already during the pandemic, research showed that primary education students learned practically nothing or even declined. As a patch on the wound, the government allocated 8.5 billion euros with which educational institutions could organize extra help. Experts believe that at least vulnerable students have benefited from this. But the backlog that primary school students took to secondary education is still not eliminated.
It is difficult to say whether the Coronacrisis has been of lasting influence on the mental well -being of the youth. Some of the researchers state that all it was not going well before 2020. The Lockdowns would have reinforced that. But there are also researchers who see it differently: the mental complaints have not been exacerbated, but today’s young people are better able to talk about it.
Whatever the case, early in 2020 there were plenty of indications that things were not going well with at least part of the youth. The cabinet did not take sufficient account of this in the corona policy. It took until 2022 for education to be opened again. That has not done the confidence of citizens in the government well. If a virus ever races over the Netherlands again, let the interests of the youth be taken into account.