Parents across the UK have been homeschooling their children throughout the third national lockdown. With schools not set to reopen until 8 March 2021, children and parents are finding it hard to keep motivated.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday that schools would only reopen on 8 March at the earliest, depending on “lots of things going right”.
Across the country, parents have been sharing their frustrations with having to homeschool their children.
One such parent is mother-of-four Katarzyna Bartoszewicz, 39. With three of her four children living at home, the responsibility of teaching them fell to her. She has been trying to balance her own work as an accountant with teaching her children at their family home in Gloucestershire with little luck.
“I’m used to it,” she said. She has been homeschooling her eight-year-old son for months. “He has no motivation and I have no motivation.”
“Every day the main challenge is to get him out of bed. I have to ask him if he’s done his work, when will he do his work, and keep repeating it. And meanwhile I don’t do my work.”
Bartoszewicz also has a 17-year-old, and he is no easier to motivate: “He is even worse. He does not get out of bed. He does not do his work.”
Bartoszewicz said she now appreciated her children’s teachers more than ever. “They need motivation and most of all they need their teachers,” she added.