Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Amidst the COVID‐19 pandemic, there is uncertainty regarding potential lasting impacts on children’s health and educational outcomes. Play, a fundamental part of childhood, may be integral to children’s health during crises. This paper undertook a rapid review of the impact of quarantine, isolation, and other restrictive environments on play and whether play mitigates adverse effects of such restrictions.

This paper deliberately places under a microscope, a township boychild named Kabelo, who is labelled in the formal education system as underperforming, learning-disabled and cognitively challenged. Kabelo epitomises the pattern of boy academic underperformance in South Africa and worldwide, particularly in reading and literacy. This pattern feeds a dominant narrative about systemic learning deficits that risks the stigmatisation of academically underperforming children whose lives intersect with stubborn structural inequality, and renders them invisible as capable, playful children.