Parents will not forgive No 10 if schools are closed again

Schooling, and as a result education as we know it, is in clear and present danger. Ministers continue to pay lip service to the need to keep schools open. Only yesterday Gavin Williamson wrote in this newspaper that “there’s broad consensus… that we must keep schools open”.

Yet there has been an ominous shift in language. Comments on the Department for Education blog now merely point to a return “to education” for students next term (which can include online learning). Boris Johnson said yesterday that the situation was under “constant review”.

Then there is the cancelling of Christmas. We were led to believe that Christmas was untouchable. Ministers had been prepared to allow us a few days together, even if it would allow the virus to spread. Similarly, after the appalling experience of the first lockdown, many of us had thought we had decided, as a society, that our children’s education was too important to sacrifice for any reason, even a more transmissible strain of the virus.

But if Christmas was disposable, many parents are asking, will schooling be next?

We already know that the start of term will see a staggered reopening. But what is a staggered reopening if not closure for the millions of children who will be grounded at home for weeks? The availability of schooling has also been tied to the roll-out of mass testing. But this programme lacks the support of unions and head teachers, is dogged by serious ethical issues, and public health experts continue to expose what look like huge problems with the reliability of the tests proposed. It is a tragedy that the wellbeing and educational prospects of our children, and the ability of parents to get back to work, may depend on this botched mess of policymaking.

But the bigger problem is that, through an absence of leadership in the face of bloodcurdling warnings from some scientists, the Government has allowed schools to become, once again, a matter of debate.

In March, we didn’t know the full extent of harms caused by closures. We do now. Report after report makes clear the devastating academic and lifetime opportunity losses, especially for the most disadvantaged.

The plethora of secondary effects are no less terrible: mental health issues and a rise in child suicides, an increase in online bullying and obesity, a widening chasm between the haves and have nots, vulnerable children falling through the cracks of a system unable to cope, and the loss of basic food security for some children.

Unicef is unequivocal: “the benefits of keeping schools open far outweigh the costs of closing them, and nationwide closures of schools should be avoided at all costs”. The impacts are so severe that Sage members have warned that school closures risk this generation becoming “the lost generation”.

These are real, proven harms. They should lead to a clear statement of intent from ministers: whether or not children are spreaders, they should be in school. But instead parents are left fearful. So far the Government’s response to Covid-19 has prioritised the elderly and vulnerable. That might have been justifiable at the start of the pandemic, but now the balance of harms is known, the need to reprioritise is clear. It would be unforgivable to close schools. Whatever it takes, we need certainty that it will never happen again.