Harm to pupils’ well-being from school closures may last forever

SCHOOL closures risk causing children “permanent scarring”, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has warned.

Prof Russell Viner, a scientific adviser to the Government, said his latest research proved that keeping children away from the classroom does “serious harm” not only to their education but also to their mental and physical health.

He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question of when it is ‘safe’ to reopen schools has focused on the risk that having children back in school will raise Covid-19 infection rates, putting us back where we were in December.

Yet when we focus on infection risk, we forget the potential for harm that can occur when schools are closed. We know that closing schools harms children’s education.

“Our research provides clear evidence for the first time that school closures and lockdown also bring a wide range of serious harms to children’s health and well-being.”

Prof Viner, an expert in adolescent health at University College London, led a team of researchers who used machine learning to analyse all the available global data on the impacts of school closures on children’s health.

They examined 72 studies from 20 countries in detail and concluded that school closures and lockdown have “very harmful effects for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing”.

Children had higher levels of anxiety and depression as well as behavioural problems when schools were closed, the studies found.

Prof Viner urged ministers to publish a strategy to prevent children’s already “damaged health” from turning into “permanent scarring”. He said schools needed to employ more health workers and nurses, as well as focusing more on prevention and resilience.

It came as researchers found that face masks on children could lead to headaches, drowsiness and difficulty concentrating. Researchers at the University of Witten/herdecke in Germany analysed more than 25,000 side effects in young people.

Parents were asked to record any side effects online last October, and 68 per cent said their children suffered negative effects from wearing a mask.

The most common complaint among children who wore a covering for an average of 270 minutes per day was irritability, with 60 per cent reporting this.

Meanwhile, 53 per cent complained of headaches, 50 per cent said they had difficulty concentrating and 37 per cent experienced drowsiness and fatigue.

The authors of the study, which was published by Research Square but has not yet been peer reviewed, said that a benefit-to-risk analysis of the use of face masks for children was “urgently needed”.

Researchers said that using an online register may have led to a bias in favour of those reporting the negative side effects of masks.

Randomised controlled trials and representative studies should be carried out on the effects of masks on children to develop a deeper understanding of the topic, researchers said.

The Prime Minister announced on Monday that secondary school students in England should wear masks in the classroom when they return if it is not possible for them to keep two metres apart. Official guidance from the Department for Education states that children in primary schools do not need to wear masks, but earlier this week The Telegraph revealed that children as young as five have been asked to wear them when schools reopen.

Parents at Selsdon Primary School in Croydon, south London, were told that children should wear a face mask at all times apart from sports lessons or when eating or drinking.

Meanwhile, parents at Nascot Wood Junior School in Watford, Herts, were told that children should wear a “well-fitted” face mask in the classroom if there was not space to socially distance.