All over the news there are rumours and plans of how we get our children to “catch up” on lost learning. Most of it doesn’t address what children have really lost but how we get children to learn more and bring them up to where the curriculum says they should be in maths, English, science, history etc.

The focus on what children are losing is both damaging and misses the key point of what is really being lost. Generally, people are worrying about children not learning subject knowledge and not being ready for exams. But what about what else is being lost – the friendships under strain, the lack of socialisation, the isolation not just from friends, but also family?

The subjects we teach each have a curriculum designed for normal, non-pandemic times.

What we teach, how much we expect children to learn and understand is set by the government, exam boards and experts in education. It’s something we ask others to decide.

We could just as easily decide to change our expectations, we could ask those in charge to change what’s expected. Learning hasn’t been lost – to lose something you need first to have it – we have simply changed what is being learned and more importantly how. Last weekend on a family Zoom call it was clear my grandchildren had very different experiences. One, in early primary, had regular online live classes where the teacher taught the children in school and online at the same time. Others had a mixture of short live sessions checking in with their teachers and being told what needed to be done. The eldest, in secondary school, had quite a full weekly timetable of live online classes.

None were experiencing a full 25-hour per week curriculum, which is what they were doing pre-pandemic. They all want to get back to school and their parents are keen for this to happen as well. Home schooling isn’t easy. It takes a lot of planning and preparation. Professionals I talk to are hoping that far from teaching being seen as something people do when they can’t get a “proper” job – the tiresome, trite taunt that “those who can do, those who can’t teach” – they will understand that teaching is a skilled and difficult job that requires training, knowledge and understanding beyond simply knowing a few facts.

If you’ve faced problems teaching a few children at home, imagine a class of 30. More worrying for me than the lack of facts being learned is what children are missing growing up in relative isolation from friends, family and society.

A big part of education is socialisation, it’s learning about people – making friends, ending friendships, moving on. It’s learning about tolerance, understanding, resilience and how to deal with complex social interactions. In short, it’s about growing up. For very young children simply knowing and forming attachments to wider family is an issue. A parent may well find that their toddler is like a limpet, reluctant to be left alone and constantly reaching out for one parent.

The role of the wider family, aunts, uncles and especially grandparents is confined to video calls which is better than no contact but still not the same as physically meeting.

As we think about what we need to do as lockdown is eased, I hope that the government do not focus on setting up “cram schools” for children, where the focus is on getting them to fill up on facts. We’ve heard rumours about extending the school day to provide more opportunities for children to engage with learning. Should that happen, I suspect it will become a permanent thing. I mean who would argue that more education is a bad thing? But there are consequences, for example, how would the government fund the extra work needed by teachers or, indeed hire more teachers?

We could shorten the school summer holidays, but again it has a cost implication. And before anyone says teachers earn enough and don’t need extra pay, imagine if someone wanted to extend your working hours but said you would earn the same? Companies that threaten to fire and rehire on that basis have run into major problems.

If we do extend the day or shorten the holidays, it should be to allow children time to engage in artistic, creative and sporting activities that enrich their lives. It should allow them to socialise and recover lost time growing up. If we focus that extra time on learning and memorising facts for exams it will be met with resentment. Constantly saying children have “lost learning” means they’ll grow up believing they are losers, the lost generation. Children have a lifetime to learn, but only one chance to grow up.