I was in a classroom observing a seven‑year‑old learner we’ll call George. The Headteacher had raised concerns about his “immature behaviour”, describing incidents of hitting adults and peers when things didn’t go his way. During a meeting with the SENCo and George’s mother, I learnt more: George didn’t have a special friend, rarely engaged socially, and mostly played alongside others rather than with them. Yet when I observed the class, I realised I would have struggled to identify him had he not been pointed out.

As a SEND consultant, my work is often described as detective‑like, teasing apart the unique aspects of a situation to understand “the difference that makes the difference”. But I see my role as something broader: a negotiator of shared meanings. I listen, contextualise, and promote the child’s voice through training, research, assessment, intervention, and consultation. My task is to help schools make sense of complex realities.

A cohort unlike any before

Compared with a 2019 cohort, many children in George’s class appeared more immature, with less developed speech, language, and social skills,  a pattern widely documented in post‑pandemic research (Hogg & Mayes, 2022; Nicholls et al., 2020). I saw George attempting to interact positively, but a well‑intentioned Learning Support Assistant hovered constantly, stepping in at the slightest sign of difficulty. With each interjection, George withdrew further, and his attempts to engage decreased. 

When I observed again, my concern shifted. It wasn’t George’s behaviour that stood out,  it was the excessive scaffolding across the classroom. Adults were stepping in so frequently that children had little opportunity to experience challenge, autonomy, or productive struggle. Unsurprisingly, engagement was low.

The Headteacher believed the class was “needy”, with many children showing signs of trauma, ASD, or ADHD. He felt George had been traumatised by lockdown and needed high levels of support to prevent failure. Yet my observations suggested the opposite: the more adults intervened, the more frustrated and disengaged George became. As Meyer & Land (2003) argue, over‑protectiveness can close down avenues of enquiry and reduce motivation.

Was this what I was witnessing?

Are all our children traumatised?

Post‑pandemic discourse is saturated with talk of trauma. Nationally, there has been a drive to become trauma‑informed (Scottish Government, 2021). A traumatised child may struggle with attention, emotional regulation, trust, and learning, all things I observed in George’s class.

But labelling children as traumatised can evoke sympathy that becomes disempowering. When pity replaces high expectations, children are given work that is too easy, under the assumption that challenge will trigger distress. Yet, lack of challenge is far more likely to trigger negative behaviour through boredom (McLean, 2008).

I also noticed an increase in conversations about ASD and ADHD. But how could we account for a sudden surge in genetically based diagnoses? As a researcher, I must question the validity of such assumptions. Human development is shaped by complex ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Behaviours can be interpreted through multiple lenses.

If we look through a trauma lens, we see trauma everywhere. But humans are inherently resilient (Bonanno, 2019). Many children had positive experiences during lockdown (Cloughton et al., 2022). What is different is not necessarily bad.

Children spent two years socialising differently, often only with adults or immediate family. If a child learnt at home with 1:1 attention, is it surprising they now struggle in a loud, unpredictable classroom? If they were discouraged from interacting with others, is it surprising they find peer relationships difficult?

Perhaps the 2023 cohort appears different because they are different, shaped by an environment no previous generation has experienced.

Schema theory and the post‑pandemic learner

Schema theory helps us understand how prior knowledge shapes comprehension (Anderson, 2004). Children’s schemas, their mental frameworks, are built from lived experience. Lockdown created vast differences in those experiences. Some children had rich, varied interactions; others had limited exposure to peers, routines, or structured learning.

Without acknowledging these differences, the attainment gap will widen (Graham et al., 2020).

In George’s school, I saw children with reduced experience of “how school works”. Well‑meaning adults, believing children were traumatised, over‑scaffolded tasks. This reduced autonomy, agency, and motivation (McLean, 2009), increasing negative behaviour through boredom.

The solution is not more scaffolding, it is better quality of teaching and learning.

Back to the basics of evidence‑based teaching

Good teaching promotes wellbeing (Rehman et al., 2020). Positive relationships, attunement, and successful learning build self‑efficacy and self‑esteem. Children need what they have always needed: adults who know them, value them, and challenge them appropriately.

This is harder post‑pandemic, not because children are traumatised or neurodivergent, but because they have had fewer opportunities to practise interacting with adults outside their family.

George’s school needed engaging, creative learning opportunities, not protective wrapping. Teachers needed support, and my role shifted to trainer, mentor, and coach. This strengthened relationships between SEND specialists and teachers, which had suffered during the pandemic.

Working with the SLT, we planned professional learning grounded in evidence. We explored how stimulating environments ignite curiosity, how teachers set the tone for collaboration, and how safe, respectful classrooms encourage risk‑taking and mistake‑making, essential components of learning.

Beyond the basics: rebuilding thinking skills

Many children missed explicit teaching of critical thinking, problem‑solving, and metacognitive skills during remote learning. I used reflective questioning with teachers to identify development goals and coached them in:

• teaching metacognitive strategies
• embedding strategy use through language and modelling
• encouraging active participation
• designing hands‑on, meaningful learning experiences

Research shows that when children are taught these skills explicitly, they become more autonomous, creative learners (Moir et al., 2020).

Post‑pandemic: where do we go from here?

The pandemic has undoubtedly affected children’s learning, but this is not simply a story of trauma. It is a story of children growing up in an unimaginably different reality.

We must return to high‑quality, evidence‑based teaching. We must give children the tools to think creatively and independently. And we must resist the urge to over‑scaffold or over‑pathologise.

As for George, and many like him, the answer is not to wrap him in cotton wool. It is to empower him. Not to lower expectations, but to raise them. Not to protect him from challenge, but to help him meet it.

Children do not need rescuing. They need teaching, understanding, and belief in their potential