Government papers show January 2021 school closures were ordered with full knowledge of the enormous collateral damage to children

Cast your mind back to the evening of January 4th, 2021. Primary-school pupils have returned from their first day at school, excited to see their friends after a low-key Christmas, with the Prime Minister having announced tougher social distancing restrictions as late as December 20th, cancelling family celebrations for many. Their older siblings wait at home to be called for covid testing – a delayed start was planned for secondary school students, who were nevertheless expecting to resume normal studies after the immense disruption of the previous nine months. Boris Johnson then appears on television to announce a third national lockdown and the second extended closure of schools. He acknowledges that “each day in education is [important] to children’s life chances”, but this was just a small part of the devastating evidence that was already available to the Prime Minister when he took the decision to close schools once again.

What did the government know about the damage to children?

Whilst the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) may not have looked at the impact of mitigations on children in spring 2020, they rightly spent a considerable amount of time in the autumn looking at the outcomes of the lockdown experiment. The group’s work in September 2020 on non-pharmaceutical interventions lists the following as risks for mass school closures:

“Non-COVID impact (incl. social and psychological; excl. economic): High. Disruption of education, wellbeing of children and parents.

School closures associated with possible increases in school drop-out, child injury, domestic violence, child abuse but reductions in referrals.

Reductions in social interaction erode social development and harm general wellbeing, and mental health of children and parents.

Equity issues: Likely to have a higher adverse impact (education, physical and mental well-being) on vulnerable children and low income and BAME communities (e.g. less access to on-line learning / less space at home to study).”

It is difficult facing the starkness of these comments knowing that children were to experience yet another year of upheaval. However, on November 4th, SAGE reviewed and accepted a number of comprehensive reports looking at schools and children.   The outcome was unequivocal: school closures damage children and young people. Amongst these reports, the most depressing read is the November 2020 paper compiled jointly by Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) and the Department for Education (DfE) euphemistically entitled ‘Benefits of remaining in education’ and shows just how aware these experts were of the damage they were inflicting on children and young people.

The following are three of the main risks of school closures as highlighted by the November 2020 SPI-B and DfE paper:

1. School closures put educational outcomes at risk, especially for disadvantaged students 

The long-term damage for education was being registered: learning problems would not be recognised and intervention delayed, meaning long-term knock-on effects for those children; additional time out of school was having cognitive and academic developmental impacts, especially in the youngest children. It was stated clearly that long-term remote learning had poorer educational outcomes than in-person learning. It was noted that research suggested that the 2020 school closures had led to a reduction in attainment of around 6-10%. Unsurprisingly, the difference depended on the quality of remote schooling and home support. Schools admitted that they struggled to adapt their teaching styles and engage pupils in remote schooling. Legislation had been introduced in autumn 2020 to make remote schooling a requirement, but teachers still expected their students’ studies to be behind.

2. School closures cause impairment to the physical and mental health of children

The bald conclusion that “school closures cause deteriorations in children’s mental health” and that failure to support interventions could lead to long-term problems are very clear as to the damage to children caused by covid restrictions. But the most shocking revelation is the statement that ‘many more young people will die from suicide than covid-19 this year’. Indeed, by the publication of this report, 12 of the 25 cases of child suicide had already been reported, in which school issues linked to covid-19 were named as contributing factors. It is truly astonishing to read this written in black and white, when at the time ministers would not even admit that school closures had damaged children.

This correlation with school closures and mental health continues into the wider population with “Girls who did not attend school in June-July were significantly more likely to have a probable mental health disorder than those who attended school full or part-time.”

3. School closures have a particularly adverse impact on vulnerable children

Given that “levelling up” was Boris Johnson’s mantra for government, school closures have reversed the progress made in the last decade. And the decision makers clearly were aware of this: “school closures reinforce existing inequalities”. It is even worse for vulnerable children, who were technically allowed in school, but many of whom simply were not there. Those that were housed in B&Bs had no respite from cramped conditions in the larger space of schools, and those that lived in fear of abuse had no escape. The fact they were not at school meant that abuse was harder to spot. Cases of abuse were down in the first lockdown in spring 2020, but experts knew that those cases they saw were more complex and included increased domestic abuse. Accordingly, Ofsted noted that schools were implementing extra safeguarding training on domestic violence and ‘county lines’ exploitation as they were aware children were now more at risk due to the closures. 

It must be remembered that at this point, in late 2020, it was not just SAGE sounding the warning bell on harms to children from school closures, but also the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield – who had been raising concerns since the start of the pandemic – and Ofsted, which had produced a worrying briefing paper on the return to school. In addition, an array of private sector organsations and individuals had, from summer 2020, been shouting with increasing urgency and desperation about the impact of lockdown and school closures on children.  These screeching warnings are detailed in Chapter 7 of The Children’s Inquiry, and included children’s charity NSPCC who published research on the pandemic-related impact on  vulnerable children in June 2020; Dr Ellie Cannon who in October 2020, along with other GP colleagues, wrote to Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock, warning of the harms of lockdown, including the impact on babies, children, and young people, highlighting among other issues the ‘concerning signal that child suicide death rates in the UK increased during lockdown and amongst those reported after lockdown’; and Robert Halfon MP who advocated for schools to reopen from June 2020 and recalls that “‘At the time when I first started to campaign to keep schools open, which was quite early on, I had a pile of **** on my head from so many people, from even my local press, and all kinds of people, who said it was outrageous.

And, of course, UsForThem.

So when the decision was taken to announce that schools were shutting late on January 4th, 2021 – with no clear plan for the return of pupils – either the government had read the SAGE papers and chose to ignore them, or they were not interested in sparing children from the proven damage their decisions would inflict upon them. In our view, both alternatives are inexcusable.