Coronavirus: Sadness for pupils who may never go back to their school

Year Six pupil Tristan is trying to keep up with schoolwork from home

Year Six pupil Tristan is trying to keep up with schoolwork from home

By Martha Buckley
BBC News

No exams, no proms, no end-of-year celebrations, school trips, sports days, shows, or discos. No farewells to friends and teachers, or signatures on shirts. No nights out to celebrate the end of exams.

Schools will continue to provide places for the children of key workers. But for the thousands of children and young adults due to finish primary school, GCSEs, sixth-form or university this summer, the news is sinking in that they may never see some classmates again.

And they will never again enter those buildings where they have spent so much of their lives.

How does it feel to have a such key stage of your life come so abruptly to an end?

The Year 6 pupil

Tristan, 11, is a Year 6 pupil in Walthamstow, north-east London.

He hasn't been to school since March 13, after developing coronavirus symptoms and having to enter isolation at home. Now he knows he might never go back to finish the year.

He says: "I had no idea I wouldn't be going back to school. I'm kind of sad because I was looking forward to our school trip. We were going to do lots of outside activities with our friends.

"I'm going to miss the Year 6 production, which is always really fun.

"It feels unfair. The other year groups [in previous years] have all got to have their Sats and much more learning and also the disco and the parties and the camping trips."

He's worried about missing his Sats - the key tests taken by pupils to gauge their progress at the end of primary school.

"I'm probably not going to do very well because I won't have as much time and I won't be having lessons in school with a professional teacher.

"I don't think it will be a catastrophe if we miss them altogether. It’s just irritating we had to do all the work for nothing.”

More than anything, the prospect of not having the chance to say goodbye to his teachers and classmates - all heading off in September to their different secondary schools - is making him feel sad.

"I would have arranged to get people's numbers but maybe I won't be able to now," he says. "I feel a bit sad I won't say goodbye to the teachers and go back to the building, but not as much as not ever seeing my friends."

The Year 11 pupil

Mia, who was expecting to take her GCSE exams, compared the situation to a film

Mia, from near Reading, spent what turned out to be her last day of school sitting a mock exam.

She says: "We had an assembly, where we heard that school was going to close and it was going to finish at 12 but then we still had to sit there and do the exam. Then we got to take a few pictures and some people signed T-shirts but not everyone had one because they weren't prepared.

"It's really sad how school ended so early because I don't think any Year 11s really got a proper last day of school. They didn't get a proper send-off like they usually would.

"Half the people I've spent the last five years with I probably won't see again. It's quite sad.

"It doesn't feel real, it feels like we're in a movie and something has gone wrong."

The sixth-formers

London sixth former Majda said she found it upsetting that her school life was going to end so abruptly

Seventeen-year-old Aurelia, from Leeds, was due to sit her A-Levels this summer but has just been told her sixth-form college is closing.

She says: "The mood in college is quite tense at the moment as a few of the teachers are trying to take lessons as normal and teach us content we may need over the close, whilst others are just asking how we're feeling and using the lesson time to speak about the news and how the coronavirus is affecting us."

Aurelia is worried about getting the grades she needs to get her university place to study medicine – but she is also sad about the events and celebrations she is going to miss.

"On a personal level I was about to turn 18 on the day of my last exam, so my friends and I were going to plan a fun transition into adulthood for me, but that doesn't seem like it'll happen now," she says.

Oliver, from Darlington, is in a similar position.

"We don't know if we're going to be able to see each other again," he says. We don't know if we're going to be able to go into college ever again before we all go off to uni.

"It could be I don't get to see some of my friends ever again and we didn't even have the chance to say goodbye properly because we didn't know this was going to happen. It was just very sudden."

Some of his friends will keep in touch online but others don't have social media access. He thinks he will see some in the university holidays but not everyone.

"I'd like to be able to see my friends again, just to be able to say goodbye, but I don't know if it's going to happen," he says.

"We're missing 18th birthdays and all our lessons together before we all move apart. It's just a very stressful time."

Majda is also facing an abrupt end to her school years in Hampstead, west London.

She says: "It's definitely very upsetting because I've been in this school for seven years and this might be my last day in this school, or tomorrow might be might last day, so I might not see any of these people, or any of my teachers, ever again. And that does make me sad."

The university student

James, from Oxford, is a final-year maths and economics student at the University of York. He says: "Our university already has short terms so we had broken up on Friday, but none of us realised that that was the last day of university and everything would be cancelled.

"None of my friends and I will be able to see one another for the foreseeable, which is jarring as I've spent three years with these people and this whole experience has abruptly come to an end.”

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“We're all expecting our graduation to be cancelled as well. My friends and I were planning to all come back to York the week of graduation and have a week of fun, that's looking likely to no longer happen. I think what is most stressful for us all is not just this abrupt end to university but what will happen afterwards.

"We have had no information from recruiters or our university as to how the coronavirus will affect our job prospects and how to apply for things in this current climate.

"I'm wondering if I'll have to do a masters instead because I don't want to waste a year of my life not being able to find work."

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