S2, Ep 32: Back To School

This week many children in England and Wales, including my own, went back to school.

The term "back to school" has a very different meaning this September. Some kids haven't set foot in a classroom for half a year and research has shown that the learning gap between rich and poor pupils has grown by half during lockdown.

So how can parents prepare and support their kids for a very different school environment? And how are teachers planning to close the learning gap?

I discuss all this and more with my guest Manraj Sanghera (AKA Northern Bindi). She's a secondary school teacher, mum of three, and as well the anxieties of returning back to school in a pandemic, her family are dealing with the loss of her son.