It is imperative that schools reopen soon

AESTABLISHED 1855 t almost the precise moment that Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, told MPS that all primary schools in England would not be going back this side of the summer holidays as planned, Mcdonald’s was announcing the reopening of its walk-in restaurants. Parents at their wits’ end, wondering when their offspring will return to the classroom, can at least console themselves with a trip to the Thorpe Park amusements when they get back into action next month. It is an extraordinarily topsyturvy world that prioritises burger bars and theme parks over the education of our children.

Even as the numbers contracting the virus fall around the country and people who cannot work from home are encouraged to go back to their jobs, the reopening of schools recedes further into the distance. There is no guarantee that secondary schools will even go back in September. Mr Williamson said he still hoped that would be the case; but since the plans for all primary schools to return before the summer holidays have been dropped, why should we believe that? Just 70 per cent of those classes that were given the go-ahead to start up again last week have done so. Intentionally or not, the Government looks as if it has caved in to the teaching unions and the local councils, whose demands for guaranteed total immunity from Covid can never be met, any more than they could be for any other eventuality.

Where is the scientific rationale for this? Health experts have consistently made the point that children are not only safe in the classroom but less likely to succumb to the coronavirus than to other illnesses such as flu. They are at greater risk from being struck by lightning than falling ill from the disease.

If, as Carl Heneghan, professor of evidencebased medicine at Oxford, posits, Covid-19 becomes an endemic illness like chickenpox that freely circulates among the population, it may even be better if children contract the virus now, rather than when they reach adulthood when they would be at greater risk. Yet no such considerations appear to have been taken into account. We should be having a rational debate informed by science, not one driven by fear and special pleading from vested interests.

The Government should publish the advice it has been given that justifies cutting children off from school for six months or more with all the baleful attendant consequences, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who do not benefit from online or home tuition.

While many teachers have stepped up to the task of supplying online lessons, thousands of pupils have not been so lucky, either because the opportunities were not provided or they do not have access to the internet. Furthermore, children are not only missing out on their schooling but on exercise, sports and extracurricular activities. The company and routine that school provides is to be removed for the best part of half a year, if not longer. This is unacceptable and the Government needs to realise that there will be political implications. If they have calculated that this will be a popular policy among parents, they may be in for a nasty shock.

Instead of looking at the modelling, ministers need to examine what has happened in countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, where the schools have been back for weeks, or Sweden, where they never closed at all. There is no evidence that reopening primary schools has led to an increase in transmission or cases.

What is the plan here? Where is the urgency or any understanding that we are in danger of wrecking the lives of a generation of children for no obvious benefit?

A “cautious, phased” approach, as Mr Williamson described it in the Commons, is not a strategy but a cop-out. As Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, said: “Children are in danger of being forgotten in the lifting of the lockdown.”

The Government should be instructing schools to return and challenging them to work out how this will be done, not trying to micromanage every little detail, from how to clean pencil cases to the need to maintain a two-metre distance. This latter rule is restricting a whole range of activities from opening up, not just schools, and should be abandoned forthwith.

Many schools would doubtless come up with ways of doing this, from teaching outdoors now that summer is here, to opening on a rotational basis or on a Saturday or doing something – anything – that focuses on starting up, not staying shut down.

The whole policy is back-to-front. The question the Government should be asking is not how do we justify opening schools but how can we continue to justify keeping them closed?

The Government should publish the advice that justifies cutting children off from school for six months

Intentionally or not, ministers look as if they have caved in to the unions and the local councils