Government leaders clashed over covid-19 school closures
Leaked WhatsApp messages – originally published by the Daily Telegraph – showed Boris Johnson caught in a crossfire over whether to close schools in aid of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A collection of more than 100,000 messages sent between former Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, and other officials at the height of the pandemic have been exposed, with one of the main messages revealing ministers majorly clashed over whether to send children to school or not.
Last week, Journalist Isabel Oakeshott, published messages where Mr Hancock revealed he had sought to fight with a ‘reargued action’ after Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, convinced Boris Johnson to reopen schools in January 2021 after the UK’s second lockdown.
Mr Hancock had said the move represented a ‘policy car crash’ and would result in a surge of Covid-19 cases.
After attending a virtual meeting with Mr Johnson and Mr Williamson, Mr Hancock said in a WhatsApp message to his special advisor, Emma Dean, who was also present at the meeting: ‘I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that, we must not fight a reargued action’.
Whilst Mr Williamson and Mr Johnson agreed to send children back to school, Mr Hancock typed to his advisor that he needed to ‘turn’ the ‘volume’ of his computer down.
The Telegraph said the messages showed he then contacted Dan Rosenfield, Mr Johnson’s chief of staff, to begin his attempt to have schools closed before children returned, providing him with his private email address.
On 4th January 2021, after many younger children had returned to classes for a single day, Mr Johnson announced schools would close and exams would be cancelled amid a national lockdown. They did not reopen until March 8.
According to government statistics, between March and June in 2020 – a period when schools were closed to the majority of pupils – symptoms of depression and PTSD were found to have significantly increased in children and young people aged between 7 – 12 years-old, suggesting keeping children off school for long periods had detrimental affects on their mental health.
Additionally, data from February and March 2021 shows that rates of probable mental disorder in children and young people have increased between 2017 and 2021 – in six to 16 year-olds, rates had increased from 11.6% to 17.4%.
As well as suffering mentally, children were also found to struggle with getting back into learning, after being taught virtually. The development of four and five year olds was found to be the most concerning – aggressive behaviour such as biting and hitting, feelings of struggling in class or being overwhelmed around large groups of children were among the difficulties reported by teachers.
In response to the information that was revealed via the leaked WhatsApp messages, Dan Paskins, Director of UK Impact at Save the Children has said the global charity thinks ministers should have considered the impacts children would have faced being off school.
Paskins said: ‘We think that this is exactly the sort of issue that the Covid-19 Inquiry needs to review all the evidence about.
‘During the pandemic we told decision makers regularly that shutting schools would have a significant impact on children’s learning and we are concerned this wasn’t always listened to. It is also frustrating to see from the leaked WhatsApp messages such a chaotic approach to the closures.
‘We said at the time that there needed to be a proper investment in helping children to catch up after their education was affected by school closures, and also that there needed to be much more support for children whose home situation meant that they were prevented from learning when schools were closed.’
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