It would be a moral crime to shut schools again. Boris will face a political earthquake if he dares attempt it

Back in March 2020, when the Government took the hasty decision to shutter Britain’s schools in response to the emerging covid threat, uncertainty reigned.

The world was panicking at the appearance of a new and deadly virus, with no treatments to speak of — let alone the effective vaccines we now have — and no firm idea how dangerous the threat was.

Ministers knew closing schools was unprecedented — but they could at least claim they didn’t know the toll it would inflict on our young.

Today, however, we know exactly the terrible consequences — and the misery, mental decline, physical illness and appalling abuse that have followed that mistake.

Fear

Last weekend, I watched with horror as Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi refused to rule out closing schools in the face of the new Omicron variant, saying only that the Government would ‘do everything in our power to protect education’.

He was echoed on Monday by Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who intoned that there are ‘no guarantees’ in this pandemic.

What chilling words. Now the fear is that the welfare of Britain’s children will be sacrificed again to protect the elderly — even if the latter are triple-jabbed.

In November it emerged that just six healthy children had died of covid in Britain since the pandemic started. In contrast, countless millions of youngsters have suffered terribly from the measures taken against the virus, especially lockdowns and school closures. Indeed, they have increasingly found their own needs sidelined to protect their elders.

Their physical health has plummeted. Between 20192020 and 2020-2021, obesity in primary school pupils leapt by the highest amount since current records began in 2006.

One Oxford University study found that cancer diagnosis in children collapsed by 17 per cent in the months after the first lockdown last year. Late diagnosis, of course, drastically reduces cancersurvival rates.

Then there is the growing epidemic of mental illness in children.

Eating disorders, self-harm and associated complex mental and behavioural disorders have all increased: the beginning of this year saw a record number of children with potentially life-threatening eating disorders waiting for treatment in England.

One prominent GP has warned that children have suffered ‘unimaginable’ mental-health damage thanks to lockdowns.

‘It would be easier for me to become a supermodel than to get a child seen by caMHS [the NHS’s child and adolescent Mental Health Service],’ said Dr Shaba Nabi earlier this year. ‘We are now living in a weird world where a primary school-age child can repeatedly self-harm, and that’s not considered enough for mental health support.’

Meanwhile, paedophiles and child abusers have been able to attack children virtually unchecked behind closed doors in family homes, as schools and social services struggled to reach vulnerable children during lockdown.

The child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel found that child abuse soared by 27 per cent between april and September 2020 compared to the same period the previous year.

Only last weekend, it was revealed that 220 children died between april 2020 and March 2021 in cases thought to involve abuse and neglect — a jump of almost 7 per cent on the year before.

By now, the tragic fate of arthur Labinjo-Hughes is known to us all. away from the oversight of his teachers during lockdown, this little six-year-old was subjected to monstrous torment by his father Thomas Hughes and stepmother Emma Tustin. His death at their hands should haunt us all — especially those who loudly champion lockdowns for children.

Foremost among these voices, of course, have been the hard-Left teaching unions, who appear to have done their best to keep teachers out of the classroom as much as possible for almost two years, whatever the consequences to the children in their members’ care.

This week, the NaSUWT teaching union was at it again, demanding a staggered start to the new term, the cancellation or postponement of ‘nonessential’ activities and for staff and parent meetings to move online.

This is the same union that, in the depths of this year’s January lockdown, called for schools to avoid live video lessons on Zoom, claiming that it would be an invasion of privacy for children to see into teachers’ homes.

Blighted

a lesson on Zoom and remote learning, of course, will only ever be a grossly inferior substitute for the classroom — as parents now know.

Last November, fully 80 per cent of schools told a government review that their students’ maths and literacy skills had been stunted after closures that year.

When primary school pupils returned in March this year, many were found to be nearly three months behind their expected educational ‘milestones’. Those with special needs had lapsed even further.

The months of missed and patchy education have also caused the education gap between rich and poor children to widen ever further, undoing a significant amount of progress made during the past two decades. Some children will simply never catch up, their prospects blighted for life.

My own children, aged six and three at the start of the pandemic, each struggled in their own ways by being locked out of school.

Only this week, my eightyear-old wanted me to reassure her that she would be going back to school after christmas — but who knows if she really will?

‘Home learning hurt my eyes,’ she told me. and that’s no surprise: less time outdoors and more spent staring at screens may have caused an epidemic of short-sightedness, according to a recent study published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

Devastation

Wearing glasses might not seem like a severe encumbrance, but the condition increases the risk of irreversible impaired eyesight and blindness later in life.

Surveying this roll call of devastation, I find it unconscionable that any minister could dream of closing schools again — especially when the new variant seems, on current evidence, less dangerous (if perhaps more infectious).

In South africa, where Omicron was first identified, the government has emphasised that the spread has so far been linked to mild symptoms — and there seems to be no question of closing schools.

If, as Mr Zahawi proclaims, our Government really is determined to do ‘everything in its power’ to protect education, it should immediately adopt the Bill brought by Tory MP Robert Halfon, who is campaigning to make schools part of our essential infrastructure, meaning they can be closed only in the most dire circumstances.

It would be a moral crime to shut them now, and it would be deadly in some cases.

Britain’s parents should not stand for it — and the Government should expect a political earthquake if they dare to attempt it again.