We can see a trend across all years where the conversation peaks in August but also has an extra bump in January as kids go back to school after the New Year. While this occurs in 2020 and 2021, we can see there’s a lot more going on in these years.

In 2020, “back to school” mentions jumped up in March, and stayed much higher than normal until the usual summer spike. This was of course due to Covid, and generally referred to schools closing and what would happen when they reopened and students returned.

The first few months of 2021 were also more volatile than usual for the same reasons, although things settled down in the run up to summer. At that point, the data nearly looked back to normal, with the spike coming a little earlier when compared to 2018 and 2019.

Next we wanted to see how people are feeling about returning to school. To do this we used our Social Panels technology to segment our data by posts from parents, students, and teachers.

When looking at the conversations as a whole, joyful mentions are the most common. For students, many are excited to go back after the trying times of the pandemic so far, while teachers are the same. Both groups are clearly happy about a return to some semblance of normalcy and the chance to learn in-person and see their friends and colleagues.

Parents are the exception though, with “sad” mentions making up the biggest chunk of their mentions. There are a mix of reasons why. Many parents are sad to see their kids less, but there’s also a lot of concern about the health and safety of their kids returning to school.

We can see this reflected in the general “back to school” conversation when we look at some Covid-related topics.

While people aren’t specifically referring to Covid-19 as much this year as they were in 2020, there’s still plenty of concern about it. Masks are being mentioned just as much in 2021 as in 2020, while vaccine mentions have shot up now they’re widely available.

The conversation is a very mixed bag from parents worried about kids not being vaccinated to others being against students having masks enforced. What’s clear though is that Covid-19 and how it’s tackled within the education system is at the top of many people’s minds.

The school shop

We also looked at what products people were talking about in relation to going back to school. Unsurprisingly there was a fair amount of tech products, with laptops and tablets way out in front. Clothing was another big topic.

While this doesn’t tell us much, we can see an interesting change in laptop and clothing mentions when we look back a few years.

Starting with laptops, mentions of these spiked in 2020 in the build up to the new school year. With millions of kids now having to work from home, owning a laptop became an essential for many, and at least a good-to-have for everyone else. There was also a lot of support for ensuring schools could supply laptops to students themselves.

Come 2021 and the conversation has died back down. Not only will less students studying from home have had an effect, many will be using the laptops they got last year. This suggests laptop demand from students may be historically low this year.

Clothing on the other hand has seen a different trend. Mentions dropped dramatically in 2020, and why wouldn’t they? If you’ll be housebound while studying, you’re less likely to think a brand new wardrobe is as important as usual. And this seems to bear out with clothing mentions rebounding in 2021 as more students physically return to school.

What we can see from all this is that while 2020 was an extremely turbulent time for education, there are signs that things are getting back on track, either through adjustment to the “new normal” or the old normal beginning to return.

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Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team