I have decided to focus on SDG 3, Good Health & Well Being. Whilst I know people are sick of hearing and thinking about Covid, I believe we are truly only starting to see the effects academically of it on children. I teach in a DESI school with significant needs as it is, yet, at the end of Senior Infants there is a serious discrepancy between where children usually would be and where they are. These would be the first children into school who would have missed out on significant pre-school time. The baseline from where we started was way beyond the norm, most children having very little language and poor social skills which has impacted on their learning.
Covid also brought about serious inequalities regarding vaccination worldwide and has led to a huge number of children being behind in their normal vaccination schedule with 22.7 million children missing out on basic vaccinations is 2020.
Wellbeing is a very popular buzz word at the moment and it is essential that we as educators try to provide children with tools and skills to help them be resilient and solve problems.