“It is important to listen to young people and understand how they feel.”
Hannan is 16 and lives in Oslo, Norway. During the pandemic, she had just started an intensive course providing a certificate of lower Secondary school. The certificate is mandatory for admittance to upper Secondary school.
Hannan wanted to be at school as she needed more help from the teachers. She found online education too difficult. It was hard to understand what the teachers were saying and how to complete the various assignments. The online platform Teams kept malfunctioning all the time. She felt it was very unreasonable that she had to take exams after only completing an online education.
When the classes for newly arrived immigrants were allowed to reopen in autumn 2021, Hannan and her friends decided to attend as many lessons as possible. Face-to-face teaching made a huge difference to Hannan. She found it easier to be more open, it made her more focused, and she made new friends. She believes youth should have been listened to and asked about how they felt during the lockdown.