This decline in motor skills may be attributable to the discontinuation of organised physical activity and sports programmes for primary school children: they could no longer participate in sports at their sports clubs and no longer had physical education classes at school.
Youngest and least skilled children perform worse after lockdown
The greatest differences can be seen among the youngest children (grades 1/2) and children who already had poorer motor skills before the first lockdown. A larger proportion of these children had poorer skills after the lockdown. In particular, more children in grades 1/2 performed worse in balancing after the lockdown. This suggests that plenty of physical activity is important for developing balance skills.
Possible solutions
It is important to minimise the consequences of the discontinuation of organised physical activity programmes. This can be achieved by deploying specialist teachers, using a dynamic school day and a movement-friendly environment, and providing targeted support for children with weaker motor skills.
Research based on three assessment tools
This research was conducted in collaboration with the developers of three different pupil monitoring systems or motor skills tests: the BLOC test, VolgMij and the 4 S-en test. Data from the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 school years were compared for these three assessment tools.
Read the full findings in the report ‘Consequences of the coronavirus measures for the motor development of primary school children’. The authors are Sofie Vrieswijk, Lisanne Balk and Amika Singh.