Table 3.

Disruptions and changes to education and school life—sub-themes and supporting extracts.

Sub-Themes:	Supporting Quotes:
Stress and anxiety	“I’ve also been feeling sick most mornings before school which I think is just because I’m anxious about having to go to school.”—Male, Aged 16 “it’s been a stressful couple of weeks with school. As I am in year 11, they’re making us do mocks already in case they have to use the grades we get to create our real grade at the end of the year.”—Female, Aged 15
Excitement	“I am very glad to be back at school and back in the swing of things again. I now feel some sort of normalness now that I am socialising once again.”—Female, Aged 16 “…it was nice to see everyone from school again and to finally talk to my teachers.”—Female, Aged 15
Mixed feelings	“Woke up sad today and it happens quite a bit... the anxiety of school is starting again and my netball is finally starting again soon which is all amazing, it’s normality... it’s just I can’t remember how to act... I’m not ready to go back!!! I have little energy and it feels like we’re being thrown in the deep end. Not sure if that makes sense but hopefully it does:)”—Female, Aged 15
Educational transitions	“I was in Year 11 when we went into lockdown. We didn’t have to do any work because we assumed our exams weren’t going to happen. So from not learning anything in six months to learning a lot of content, it’s been strange.”—Female, Aged 16 “This week has made me realise how much I would have remembered, had we taken the exams. A Level content is made from the GCSE, so taking the GCSE would mean that I would be more prepared. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for how hard A Levels were going to be.”—Female, Aged 16
Exams	“The past few weeks leading up to GCSE results day have been quite overwhelming for me.”—Male, Aged 16
Disrupted or fractured learning	“…today I am actually at home as one person in our year and quite a few in our school now have the virus. This is so annoying especially since we had no idea this was going to happen until quite late last night and so many of my books are still at school. I am hoping to be back tomorrow though which is a relief. Also, recently at school all the lots of the teachers are off after two are confirmed to have the virus. This makes lessons (when we are in school) really annoying again and it means we have some cover lessons and its quite hard. Also, all of heat nine are off like our year so our school has been affected pretty badly at this point but hopefully things will get a bit better soon.”—Female, Aged 15
Frustration about social distancing rules within school	“I definitely think there is going to be another spike from schools re-opening, there’s no social distancing going on and the corridors are packed so closely together. If one person gets COVID then it’ll spread very quickly but people will still blame young people for the spike even though it’s not our fault, we’re being forced to go back to school.”—Male, Aged 16 “The social distancing the first week was great, everybody did it. But then, after that, not all teachers, some of the teachers, laid off a bit.”—Male, Aged 14
Worries about the future	“I don’t like to think about 6 months, 12 months, because then I’d have to be thinking about university. But you can’t think about university, is it going to be online, are we going to have mocks and stuff, that’s one big thing I think. It hasn’t hit me yet, but it is little inklings, like, you need to think about university.”—Female, Aged 16