Closed schools are as big a threat as Covid
The UK’s four chief medical officers have put their names to a letter that lays out the case for reopening schools and the bottom line is that, while there are risks involved, they aren’t nearly as great as many people fear. “Compared to adults, children may have a lower risk of catching Covid-19…, [they] definitely have a much lower rate of hospitalisation and severe disease, and an exceptionally low risk of dying.” Transmission of the virus within schools does occur, but the letter states that it is “probably not a common route”.
In fact, failure to reopen the schools poses a greater threat than the coronavirus itself, a point that Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, makes in an interview broadcast later today: “many more are likely to be harmed by not going than harmed by going”. It’s frustrating that the Government is only now making abundantly clear something lots of us have known for months, namely that depriving children of school hurts their health, that the poorest will be worst affected, and – this is blindingly obvious – that education will suffer.
The last two weeks have already seen the dire consequences. Grades for GCSEs and A-levels had to be calculated after months of missed classes and without exam results. First the Government used a dreams-destroying algorithm; after a public outcry, it fell back on highly generous teacher assessments. Confidence in the whole system has been shot to pieces and universities are so oversubscribed that Durham is now paying people to defer for a year. All of this only builds up trouble for the next cohort, who absolutely cannot afford to lose any more time in the classroom.
Schools must reopen; teachers must fully support it. As the medical officers state, if there is a rise in infections then it is likely that the lockdown will stiffen in other sectors, meaning venues such as pubs will be closed. If so, action must be as precise and targeted as possible, because the argument for keeping the economy alive is much the same as it is for schools. The more things are open, the better for health, enterprise and generating the revenue necessary to pay for this extraordinary experiment in social control.