On Monday 21 November 2022, Autsera co-founder Dr. Inas Ismail attended The Early Years Conference hosted by the British International Education Society. The conference focused on the effects of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown on early years education and children’s development.
Speakers included Phil Minns, the specialist advisor for Early Years and Primary education at Ofsted, Dr Tasha Ebanks-Garcia, a representative of Cayman Island in the UK, Dr Karen Boardman, Head of the Department of Early Years Education at Edge Hill University, Kerry-Jane Packman, Executive Director of Programmes at Parent Kind and many more significant speakers.
Our co-founder Inas Ismail participated in a Q/A panel with Lydia Abou-Jaib the head of Early Year at BIEA, Rebecca Sherwood, Headteacher of Kintore Way Children’s Centre and Alice McAnena, head of Research Impact at UCL about the challenges that children in Early Years, their educators and carers faced in response to the time spent in lockdown during the pandemic.
Top 3 priorities
It was established that among the main areas affected are personal, social and emotional development as well as communication skills and speech and language development. Children with special education needs have also faced a multitude of challenges during the pandemic due to the lack of support and resources needed to substitute for social interaction.
The way forward
The speakers and participants in the conference discussed different ways to offer support to Early Years children to overcome the effects of lockdown. We, at Autsera, have learned a lot and will use it forward in our approach to helping children with their social and communication skills. As a start, we’ve done more research and got some valuable advice from our SEN advisor on how to support children in Early Years settings to overcome the challenges caused by the pandemic.
