Half of primary school kids not motivated for distance learning

Half of primary school aged kids in the Netherlands are not motivated to learn from home, according to an Education Monitor survey among 700 pupils between 8 and 12 years old and a thousand parents, ANP reports.

Half of kids said they would rather attend school physically than learning from home, as they had to do during the coronavirus lockdown in the spring. Almost two thirds of kids indicated that they had less and less motivation for distance learning as the lockdown continued.

The researchers found that parents' views of their children often differ from reality. For example, 80 percent of parents thought their kids would like distance learning. And only half said they noticed their children's motivation decrease in the lockdown.

A majority of parents said that learning from textbooks stimulates their child, but children disagree on that point. Nine out of ten children said they prefer to learn from games. Less than half said they like to learn from a textbook.

According to the researchers, this ties in with the current issue of Dutch children's literacy skills decreasing. Because they don't like reading, they do it less. And that results in poorer reading skills.