A quarter of parents refused to take their children to school because of the pandemic

As follows from the results of a study conducted on the eve of the start of the school year by Skysmart, Invitro and Tiburon Research, after the pandemic, the format of children's education has undergone significant changes.

“It turned out that 24% of respondents refused the classic full-time education format for their children in the current academic year”, - the researchers note.

They found that 16% of “refuseniks” parents chose hybrid education, where only some of the classes in school are compulsory, and the rest goes online. About 4% of families have completely switched to online education, and 3% preferred homeschooling.

The survey results show that since April 2020, 73% of parents have changed the format of their children's education. About half of the respondents switched to hybrid education (some of the classes are full-time, and some are online), 39% chose online education, and another 5% switched to full-time home schooling (offline education at home).

For 84% of families, the decision to change the format of education was forced: this was demanded by the authorities or the school administration, and 16% said that this was an independent decision of the family. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of parents feared that a child could contract covid and other dangerous diseases at school during full-time studies, and about a third were afraid that the child would “bring the infection from school,” and the whole family would eventually fall ill. Having tested new learning formats, 29% of respondents considered them more convenient and comfortable for the child, another 24% called them more effective .

As a result, when the new school year began, and many restrictions were lifted, 16% of parents transferred their children to a hybrid format, 4% switched to online, and 3% to full-time home schooling. At the same time, about 9% of parents - “refuseniks” from full-time attendance at school said that this type of study is ineffective, inconvenient or uncomfortable for the child.

Meanwhile, a number of countries are trying to limit the online presence of children. For example, in China, the authorities banned online games for schoolchildren from Monday to Thursday.

The survey participants were 1000 parents of schoolchildren from Russian cities with a population of over 100 thousand people.