IGNORED: Warnings that school closures would harm children
Chilling report on lockdown ‘went unheeded’
A ‘CHILLING’ warning about the devastating impact school closures would have on pupils during the pandemic was ignored by Government scientists behind Britain’s lockdown, the authors of a new book claim.
Campaigners Liz Cole and Molly Kingsley unearthed a report written in April 2020, just a month after schools closed, which said the move was putting education seriously at risk and two-thirds of parents were warning their children’s mental health was suffering.
The report, written by four academics and a civil servant on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the risk to 30,000 vulnerable children had ‘increased significantly’ and called urgently for data on whether child suicides were rising.
The authors discovered the study had been quietly released as an ‘annexe’ to another report and did not appear to have been discussed by other scientists on Sage.
They say it was one of a string of ‘ear-splitting’ warnings that went unheeded about the harm that school closures and strict social distancing rules would cause children.
Their book The Children’s Inquiry, which will be published this month, claims children were treated as a ‘de facto underclass’ during the pandemic and that an entire cohort of pupils are now unhealthier, unhappier and behind educationally.
The book says: ‘It should be a matter of shame to all involved that by summer 2020, most UK children were unable to attend school while adults queued outside Primark or went to the pub.’
It adds: ‘From a child welfare point of view, our pandemic response was a national disaster.’
Schools throughout the UK were ordered to close in March 2020.
Many children returned to their classrooms in September of that year, only for schools to be shut again in January last year.
Even when they reopened that March, Covid outbreaks and isolation rules caused chaos.
Amid mounting concern, Mrs Cole, 48, and Mrs Kingsley, 43, who each have two children, founded the UsforThem campaign.
Their book reveals that more than a million referrals were made to specialist child mental health services last year – up 15 per cent – while the number of children waiting for eating disorder treatment has tripled. The authors found that 46 per cent of children who entered reception year in 2020 were not ‘school ready’ – up from 35 per cent in 2019.
The book reveals that Anne Longfield, then Children’s Commissioner, spent ‘weeks and weeks’ arguing that children should return to school.
Ms Longfield told the authors it was ‘absolutely unnecessary’ to keep schools closed until the last weeks of the summer term in 2020, calling it ‘virtually criminal’.
The authors highlight how Professor Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist and a member of Sage, said that there had been no compelling evidence to justify school closures and express their shock at discovering some of the worst effects had been pinpointed within a month of locking classroom doors – yet Government scientists continued to recommend tough Covid lockdown measures.
The Department for Education said: ‘The Government acted swiftly over the course of the pandemic to minimise the impact on children’s education and wellbeing and help keep pupils in face-to-face education as much as possible.’
‘Our pandemic response was disaster for welfare’