A paediatrician said on Sunday that teachers and parents should focus on helping children with special educational needs adapt to social settings, given that the pandemic had a profound impact on these children's physical and mental health.

Dr Patrick Ip, clinical professor at HKUMed, said his team found in their research with more than 1,000 children in Hong Kong that many with special educational needs lacked interaction and support during the pandemic and this has affected them since returning back to the classroom.

He said that additional support at school and at home is needed to help these children.

"In this critical moment when children are returning to school again, we need to pay particular attention to all our children, in particular those with special educational needs, that we should not overemphasise on school examinations and too much pressure on academic performance," he said.

"On the other hand, we should support them, back up actually to their resuming to the normal learning environment, and encourage them to actually engage in more recreational and also playful environmental activities so that they could get adapted to the new environment, to build up rapport with their peers and also to engage with their teachers and senior professionals much better."

Ip advised parents to focus on their children's psychological well-being, by encouraging more outdoor activities and sports.

"We need to be aware about the needs of individual children. Let the parents to get involved in assessing and also following up of learning of the individual child, so that they could participate in all those support together with the school teachers, continue with some of the continued training and then understand the needs and emotions of the individual child with SEN also at the family setting," he said.

"And also to plan for some group activities together with the children and their peers, and try to go out with those little kids with special educational needs to do more recreational outdoor activities in order to soothe their stress and let the children get adapted to the new environment together with their parents."