The damage to children is immeasurable

Paging Mr Williamson! In an open letter, 120 psychologists have warned the Secretary of State for Education that the decision to delay returning children to schools is “a national disaster”. The country’s most eminent experts are united in the view that the needs of youngsters “have been neglected in the crisis” and a lack of input to Sage specifically covering young people’s mental health and education “is a dangerous omission”.

You can say that again. It is the cruellest of ironies that a child is four times more likely to be struck by lightning than harmed by Covid-19 yet non-essential shops are allowed to open while schools remain closed to all but a minority of pupils, probably until September. If then. Seriously?

While the Government says it is going to “start” – yes, start! – a review into the crazy two-metre distancing rule that makes it so hard for classrooms to open, a study from UCL found that two million kids are doing less than an hour of schoolwork a day at home, or none at all. They will never catch up. Many of us have witnessed a worrying deterioration in our own offspring. Only yesterday, a young mother grew tearful as she told me that her placid three-and-a-half-year-old has become incredibly aggressive. “He wants to go to nursery. He shouts, he hits his face.” Her husband, a scientist, is trying to work from home, but he can’t cope. There are millions of families like theirs.

Meanwhile, on our raging streets, we see the release of pent-up energy and frustration. “In wartime, the young are kept very busy,” texts a friend whose previously high-achieving son is going off the rails. “This war requires them to be totally idle. Boris needs to address as a matter of urgency.”

Does the Prime Minister know what urgent means? You do begin to wonder. Private schools and academy chains are desperate to open. Heads and governors agree, but they are denied the insurance against Covid that would give them the confidence to do so. Faced with a major legal action against the lockdown by the businessman Simon Dolan, the Government’s defence lawyers declared that schools were never closed in the first place.

“Apparently, it is nonsensical for us to say that schools are closed,” an incredulous Dolan reported, “because they remained open for key workers and there had only been a ‘request’ that schools should shut their doors to other pupils.”

Funnily enough, when parents saw the Prime Minister on TV on March 18 saying, “After schools shut their gates from Friday afternoon they will remain closed for most pupils until further notice”, they were left with the distinct impression he meant schools were closed.

The Government may have time for such shenanigans. Our children don’t. It could remove schools’ anxiety about insurance at a stroke by bearing any risk from Covid claims – exactly as it does for acts of terrorism.

It goes against the grain to lose confidence in a Conservative Government’s ability to deliver, but what choice do they leave us? Children are collateral damage in this virus war. It’s so, so wrong. Covid doesn’t kill the young, but they will die a million deaths of despair.