School holidays skills regression is not just a phenomenon, it's a real thing.
Also known as “summer learning loss” or “summer slump”, students can lose some of the skills they had learned over the course of the previous academic period during a school holiday.
The 'skills' don’t just refer to academic skills including reading, writing, maths and topics learnt in previous terms, but can also include other types of skill such as social, self-help, knowledge and understanding of the world around us, etc.
Skills regression can impact on all children but in my experience (over 15 years) of working with SEN children, the regressions can be much more profound. I remember one boy who had received a whole term of weekly speech sound therapy sessions in year 1 had completely forgotten his new sounds upon entering year 2 and seemed to have lost the entire term’s progress. It was quite disheartening.
Why does skill regression happen?
So what causes the learning loss and regression? This is a well-researched area and there can be a few elements that contribute to the loss of skills.
One main factor is the lack of routine and structured learning. Time at home for most children does not have a set schedule and a variety of learning activities throughout the day.
In my own home there’s no particular time for the children to wake up in the morning, no set mealtimes (we do eat 3 meals a day but they aren’t within strict time windows as they are at school) and since they are a little older (aged 11 and 13), bed time is also rather flexible.
With many families, parents continue to work and children attend summer holiday groups or spend time with arranged childcare. Exposure to the language-rich environments like those that children have at school can be reduced in the holidays and opportunities for talking and conversations may not be as frequent.
There’s usually no homework to compete, no home school diaries to fill in and no accountability to continue with learning activities as many children are between teachers so there’s nobody for parents to ‘prove’ they’ve done the homework. (This is definitely my opinion of my own experience).
And also, it’s the holidays. Considered by many to be time off from work. The children have worked hard all academic year, it’s time for a little fun.
What can Teachers & schools do about holidays skill regression?
Expect some level of regression for all of your students and be prepared to revise and re-teach some skills.
Many teachers I’ve worked alongside have used the first few weeks as a time to revise, re-learn and reassess children’s skills which also gives them the opportunity to see how each child learns and note some ideas on how to support their learning and processing skills. You can learn more about how to identify and support needs, including processing skills in my SLCN Impact Pack [click here to find out more]
Forgive that it happens. It’s not the children’s fault that learning has been lost, and it’s likely that they’ve had some amazing experiences over the summer while they’ve not been in the routine of structured learning.
Take the opportunity while you’re going over things that should be concrete in their knowledge to assess their skills, you can use my SLCN checklist to make sure there’s no underlying difficulties with their comprehension, memory, processing, vocabulary and other skills [click here to get the checklist].
How to boost children’s skills in school.
This is a great time to boost your pupil’s skills and set good learning habits. There’s a range of strategies and activities to give your children a great start to the academic year with you in my SLCN Impact Pack [HERE].
You’ll need to look out for speech, language & communication difficulties in a range of areas from attention & listening, memory & processing to using speech sounds and phonics as well as fluency and stammering.
By using strategies to support their skills in your classroom, you’ll find increased engagement in your lessons and reduced negative impacts on their learning and life skills.
How to help parents to enable a multi-pronged supportive approach.
Share some of these ideas into your newsletter for the first week back and encourage parents to share their activities on your school social media pages.
💛 Make sure the children get enough sleep and have a good breakfast so that they can come into school ready to learn. Getting back into the school routine can be hard for many families, especially those with additional needs so gentle reminders to parents about good bedtime routines and reduced device time before bed. This will help children to be able to focus better in school.
💛 Allow for more exercise and play during the first week or two back. I understand that the curriculum (and maybe your senior leadership team too) may not be particularly flexible in allowing extra play and relax sessions in school but these are so important for re-strengthening social skills as well as boosting cooperation and verbal communication which is vital for paired/small group working.
Play time is also key for allowing breaks, especially as many children will have spent the whole summer playing and having had less structured time for learning.
💛 Get reading again. Encourage your children and their families to fall in love with reading, in whatever way is preferable to them. See if you can have a class or school-wide reading challenge to find the funniest places the children have been caught reading and to share photos and stories with the rest of the class.
This happened for one of my children’s classes and the children had a blast with their parents taking photos of the silliest places they were caught reading- in the garden shed, at the crazy golf, in the supermarket. They didn’t just read books, any thing that can be read is fair game. See if you can do something similar with your children.
💛 Play some board games, these are amazing at strengthening social skills including turn taking, sharing and cooperation, as well as conflict navigation & resolution. There’s of course the added bonus of word and maths skills included in the board games too. There are plenty of board games in charity shops, our local library lends some out and one school I worked in had so many unused games in their classroom cupboards they had a lending library.
💛 Incorporate reading & maths into daily activities: look for letters, sounds and words in the shampoo and body wash bottles during bath time, ask children to help you tally up the cost of a small shop or the food for dinner, get them to help you write a shopping list.