What will happen if schools are forced to shut again
The prospect of yet more closures is leaving both parents and children utterly exasperated by the overreaction
Last Wednesday, as Messrs Johnson, Vallance and Whitty addressed the nation wearing their doom-faces and calling yet again for “the slides”, Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, was tweeting upbeat messages: “Measures [announced tonight] will… help keep children and young people in childcare, school, college and uni, with their friends and teachers.”
Meanwhile, my youngest son (15, in his GCSEs year) was staying late after school – a small, oversubscribed, non-selective independent outside London – for a pizza and ping-pong evening, celebrating, in the words of the parental email, “how hard Year 11 have worked this term”. On Friday afternoon, however, there came another communication: “Dear parents/guardians. Please see attached a user guide for learning at home and how to use Microsoft Teams…”
Warning bells rang, so I called the school. “Please tell me you’re not planning to shut?” “Not at all!” I was reassured, “This is just a round-robin email to cover those children who are off.” Fair enough.
Within two hours there was yet another email. This one, ominously, from the head: “Following the Government’s announcements… a spike in cases… parents questioning whether events should go ahead… decided to avoid mass gatherings that could pose a risk to our community… Art trip to London postponed, tomorrow’s sixth form dinner cancelled, Year 11 Saturday maths revision sessions are virtual… term ends early next Wednesday.”
Verily, a seasonal (ding-dong very un-merrily) blizzard of cobbled-together decisions spurred by a “spike in cases”. So what? Was anybody actually unwell? Clearly, this snap decision echoed the equally nonsensical omicron-related guidance: work from home – but go to the pub.
It struck me that, by ending the term early (but not right away), the school was virtue signalling to appease those snowflakey parents “beginning to question whether our big events should be going ahead”. But why hadn’t it canvassed all the parents for their opinions? Haven’t these children already lost enough of their all-important education?
It was bad enough that my son’s excellent, in-person Saturday morning maths GCSE revision sessions were now going online (the iGCSE maths exam is in early January and his class is halfway through the two mock papers that will presumably dictate grades should the exam be cancelled). Even aside from its academic remit, the school’s Christmassy extra-curricular events are its beating emotional heart. On a Year 11 parents’ WhatsApp group, one mother admitted that her child (who joined the school in Year 9 but had been unwell in the last week of their first Christmas term) had now missed two school Christmases and could in fact leave the school without having attended any of them.
At which point something snapped; I’d already been through the chaos of my elder son’s cancelled A-levels (at another school) in 2020, so I fired off a furious email to the head, copying in anyone else on staff whose email address came to hand. No reply. The following morning (having watched my son fail to access the remote revision class on his laptop, reverting to using his phone) I fired off another. No reply.
On Sunday afternoon I stood watching my son playing football alongside another mother who works closely with the excellent, lockdown-resistant parental pressure group Us For Them (mission: “that children must be placed front and centre in all decisions impacting them and the wellbeing of children should be a guiding principle of public policy making”).
Touchline mum told me her son’s school had already closed and that a parental WhatsApp group was now seeing a great deal more active engagement from, specifically, angry MPs who have had enough. “They are as angry as we are that the tragic death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes came about partly because school closures ensured he was not seen by people who could have helped him. They are as angry as we are that roughly 100,000 children have gone missing from school rolls since lockdown. If schools close in January, well…”
Well, it certainly won’t help the children whom Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector of schools, last week said had fallen behind in their language skills, struggled to interact with their peers, and “lost physical dexterity and confidence through a lack of practice while confined to their homes” in the first lockdown.
If schools really close in January as a result of omicron compromising the blessed NHS, then they are quite literally putting some children at risk. Less than a week on from his cavalier tweets about keeping children in school/uni, Zahawi is now hedging his bets, saying that he cannot “guarantee” all schools will be open next term but will do “everything in my power” to keep children in class. How reassuring.
Late Sunday afternoon I finally received a reply from the head. He agreed with many of my points, apparently… however, sadly, his hands were tied. Hmm.
How, I responded, can his school abdicate its contractual responsibilities towards the children in its care, to be seen virtue signalling to a cohort of parents who, in truth, could be entirely uninformed? I also made a broader point: he had mentioned “Christmas with grandparents” as a motivation to cancel the school’s own Christmas for its kids – which is clearly a kind of madness. At this stage in the pandemic’s proceedings nearly everyone who wants to be vaccinated/boosted is vaccinated/boosted – or about to be – and it is therefore not the responsibility of anybody’s child to “protect” someone else’s elderly relative from catching any disease, ever.
The school’s stance felt to me like a kind of culture war mission-creep. There is a sense now that feelings outweigh facts, that being seen to enact socially sanctioned versions of “doing the right thing” (whether that’s saving “our” NHS or having a lovely Christmas with already triple-vaccinated Grandma) is somehow more important than actually doing the right thing. Which, of course, would be to ignore irrational emotional pressure from scared parents and keep your school open for the children.
My son usually catches the train to school; however, on Monday morning I dropped him off, still limping slightly from a minor footballing injury, and was hailed in the car park by a staff member privy to my email storm.
“Between you and me,” they said, “I agree with every word you wrote. Frankly, if schools shut in January, I shall probably go on a march for the first time.”
Even if the Cabinet is made up mostly of fathers (who leave most of the hands-on parenting to their wives), I still fail to understand why children’s emotional and physical welfare isn’t ever a motivating factor in deciding governmental policy. However, maybe between nappy changes, our Prime Minister – the fortunate recipient of the very best education that money can buy, after all – would like to hear what (with nearly two years of educational disruption under his belt) a 15-year-old had to say when I told him school was closing early.
“Everyone is being vaccinated and boosted, so, if school shuts in January just because there’s a bad cold going around, and they cancel our GCSEs again this year, what exactly is the point of school?”
And, as he wandered away, crest clearly fallen, from his textbooks towards his Xbox, resigned to yet another winter spent “saving the NHS”, I really couldn’t think of an answer.