Schools

On Sunday morning, Boris Johnson told us that schools were safe but, tellingly, did not rule out further closures. By Monday evening he had shut every school in England to most pupils. By then, of course, many primary schools had opened for just one day. Children mingled – as they do – and went home not to return. But after those bubbles were mixed, fewer grandparents may be willing to look after them. When will they return? Johnson said not until half term, at least. But when policy can reverse so quickly in less than 36 hours, just about the only certainty is that it is far easier to close schools than it is it reopen them again.

Here are the numbers that show why schools are very unlikely to re-open any time soon in London and the south east, and why within a week or so the whole country may be in a lockdown that includes school closures. Tier 4, the so-called "stay-at-home tier", is broadly equivalent to the two-week circuit-breaking lockdown that was imposed in November. It did not include school closures, but it suppressed the rate of transmission of Covid-19 to 0.85 or 0.9. In other words it led to the infection gradually shrinking in the community. Unfortunately, since then we’ve witnessed the explosive growth of the new strain of Covid-19.

It used to be the case that the only things that were certain in life were death and taxes. To that list we can now add unending turmoil and confusion at the Department for Education. Today Gavin Williamson U-turned on the government’s previous pledge to keep schools open, announcing that a number of schools in Covid ‘hotspots’ would not be going back as planned next week. Primaries in some areas – including a slightly random patchwork of London boroughs – will not reopen next week. Those in lower tiers and some Tier 4 areas will start term as planned. The following week, years 11 and 13 will return to secondary schools, and from the week beginning 18 January, all year groups will return.

There have been many shocking sights in this cursed year. For me, one of the most shocking has been the sight of comfortably off, Oxbridge-educated experts and journalists agitating for the closure of schools even though they know this will hit poor kids hardest. This alarmingly cavalier attitude towards the education of the less well-off has exposed the class tensions that lurk behind the lockdown. Once again, depressingly, school closures are back on the agenda. SAGE says the only way we can get the current wave of Covid infections under control is by enforcing a proper lockdown, including the closure of schools and universities. Many in the media, long smitten with SAGE, agree.

In a sane world, Andrew Cuomo would be America's least popular politician, a welcome target for a primary campaign or a robust Republican challenge in 2022. Yet the anti-Cuomo chorus has included precious few voices this year. The New York Post has been unrelenting in its criticism, as have conservatives in publications such as this one. ProPublica and the Associated Press rigorously reported out the nursing home debacle. But Cuomo's performance has been largely been lauded by liberal New Yorkers and pundits in the mainstream media. In July the New York governor was the 'politician of the moment', according to the New York Times.

Britain’s first lockdown hammered our kids. Being away from school for months widened the educational gap between rich and poor and harmed the prospects and wellbeing of children from low-income homes. Knowing that, what do you call people who want to close schools again? Here’s the punchline, although it’s not funny: teachers. Or more accurately, teachers’ unions. You might have missed this on a grim Saturday afternoon, but even before Boris Johnson had confirmed Lockdown 2, the National Education Union was calling for schools to be included. That would mean another month (at least) away from school for millions of kids, followed by reduced schooling.

It has been clear from the start of the Covid-19 crisis – from Wuhan’s experience, before cases were confirmed in Britain – that it was a disease with relatively little impact on children. A broad study led by Liverpool University and published in the British Medical Journal today confirms that – and sheds a lot more light on how Covid-19 affects children. The study looks at data from 260 hospitals in England, Scotland and Wales, to which 69,516 patients were admitted with Covid symptoms between 17 January and 3 July. Of these, 651 were aged under 19 and 225 were aged under 12 months. Serious underlying medical conditions were present in 42 per cent of the children.

There’s a new trend emerging when it comes to Covid-19 policy: where Scotland leads, England follows. In recent weeks, decisions taken by Nicola Sturgeon have – eventually – been adopted by the UK government for England: first, the U-turn on how A-level and GCSE results would be attributed, and today another U-turn on face masks in schools.When Scotland announced face masks would be made mandatory for pupils earlier in the week, the government remained adamant that this would not be required in English schools. But within days, the advice quite substantially changed, now requiring secondary school students in local lockdown areas to wear them in the corridors and communal areas.

It is still far from clear whether schools will succeed in re-opening next week, as government ministers, education authorities and unions battle it out over safety – or supposed safety – concerns. Now, as back in May, when the government first proposed re-opening schools, the unions have demanded evidence that it will be safe for children to return to the classroom. The difference now is that we do have real-world evidence on the spread of Covid-19 in schools. Public Health England (PHE) has analysed what happened when over a million children finally returned to school in June. In the subsequent weeks until the end of term, 70 children and 128 staff tested positive for Covid-19.

It was obvious that closing schools would hit the poorest hardest, inflicting permanent damage and deepening inequality. While many private schools and the best state schools maintained a full timetable of lessons throughout lockdown, a study by UCL in June found that 2.3 million pupils — one in five of the total — did virtually no schoolwork at all during the weeks of lockdown. The official response has been to turn a blind eye, and imagine that the damage can be covered up by simply awarding decent exam results. This year’s students are right to protest about the injustice of the system. From the moment the decision was taken to cancel exams, rather than carry out exams with social distancing, this year’s mess was guaranteed.