Sheffield City Council Executive Member for Education, Children and Families would like to give her thanks to the city’s teachers, pupils and parents on the last day of the school year.

Councillor Jayne Dunn, Executive Member for Education, Children and Families, said:

“Over the past 18 months, the pandemic has particularly impacted on our children and young people. We know how much school closures impacted on education and teachers, pupils and parents have made heroic efforts, operating in the most challenging of circumstances. They deserve recognition for everything they have done to get through the past year and I would like to thank them.

“The city has really pulled together to do everything in our power to help our children, young people and families to manage this situation. Not only in dealing with the massive challenge of home schooling earlier in the year, but even now many bubbles are isolating and this is still causing disruption to learning. Their efforts in managing this has made a massive contribution to getting us through the pandemic.

“We have been working with Learn Sheffield and schools to put in place support such as providing free school meals through the holidays when the government refused to provide the funding, to work with Laptops for Kids to provide the equipment to learn from home and many other interventions to give our young people the support that they need.

“However, we know that the impact will be longer term and we must put in place comprehensive actions to secure educational recovery for our young people and to lobby the government nationally for the funding that is needed to do this.

“I’m aware that all of this has meant many people have had to make huge sacrifices. Everyone is tired and for those who are able to take time off over the next few weeks I’m sure you will be rightly looking forward to a very well-deserved break over the summer.”