‘That’s why I think those who keep parroting ‘if it saves one life, it’s worth it’ are wrong.’

Bill Carmichael

I CAN well understand the desperately difficult decision that parents are faced with on whether to send their children back to school at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic, although probably and thankfully past its peak, is still raging.

No parent would willingly put their child in danger and the overwhelming instinct to keep their children secure drives a better-be-safe-than-sorry attitude. This must be particularly true if you have elderly or vulnerable people at home and want to shield them from any risk of infection imported from the school playground.

And I sympathise with the worries of teachers who point out that social distancing is pretty much impossible with young children and the risk of infection must therefore be higher than in other environments.

All this is true. But the notion that schools can’t return to teaching until all risks are reduced to zero is completely unreasonable. In our everyday lives, both before the pandemic and after it, we live with risk every day. Indeed it is an integral part of leading a full and enjoyable life.

For example, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, between 30 and 60 people are struck by lightning in the UK every year, and between five to 10 per cent of these will die – a mortality rate far in excess of anything we’ve seen with coronavirus.

Particularly at risk are those who work outside or who enjoy outdoor pursuits such as walkers, golfers, rock climbers, anglers, agricultural and construction workers. If we take the precautionary principle to its logical extreme, as I think we are in danger of doing, we should ban all these activities until we can reduce the 300,000 lightning strikes that happen in the UK every year to zero.

Are we seriously going to argue that farmers, rock climbers, walkers and golfers can never enjoy another day outdoors until we’ve found a means of eliminating entirely the very common and entirely natural incidence of electrical storms?

Of course not. This is all about analysing and managing the risk, something we used to be good at. For example the angler takes his tackle to the riverbank and sits for hours waiting for the fish to bite, all the while accepting there is an infinitesimally small risk that his next catch will be his last.

Indeed, even if you confine yourself to your home and only take a 10 minute stroll in the garden, you are still at risk of being hit by a stray meteorite or catching your finger on a rusty nail and developing sepsis and dying as a result.

That’s why I think those who keep parroting “if it saves one life, it’s worth it” are wrong, including the teaching unions and many local authorities. This week Bradford Council joined Calderdale in announcing it would defy government advice to start re-opening schools early next month.

Perhaps some of the so-called “resistance” comes from a knee-jerk opposition to anything this government proposes, rather than the welfare of pupils.

They say they want to keep children safe. Fine, but there is also a risk to children in keeping schools closed.

Bradford and Calderdale include some of the most disadvantaged areas in the country that will be disproportionately hit by the pandemic.

More prosperous parents are using some of the excellent online resources to home-school their children. But this is far less likely to happen in poorer homes and there is a serious danger that disadvantaged children will fall behind to such an extent that it will permanently damage their life chances.

All the evidence we have suggests that those most at risk from this pandemic are the elderly and those with serious health problems. The danger to younger, fitter people, including school children, is very low. Perhaps not quite as low as a lightning strike, but nevertheless low.

That’s why we should re-open the schools with safeguards like staggered start times, smaller class sizes and rigorous hygiene measures. Infection rates need to be monitored and classrooms closed if there are any spikes in infections.

But schools have begun to reopen across Europe – in Denmark, Germany, France, Holland, Austria, Switzerland and Greece – without any major problems. For the sake of our children, particularly the most disadvantaged, it is about time we did the same.