Contribution
My Lords, Amendment 502M would create a statutory duty to keep schools open for in-person attendance in future public health and other civil emergencies, unless Parliament expressly approves any closures and continues to approve them every two weeks.
We await the conclusions of the UK Covid-19 inquiry, but it is now widely accepted that it was a mistake to close schools during the pandemic. The evidence that it had a catastrophic impact on children is overwhelming. I am thinking of the research published by Ofsted in April 2022, when my noble friend Lady Spielman was at its head, which was based on inspection evidence that highlighted delays in children’s speech and language progress and a negative impact on children’s personal, social and emotional development. I am thinking of research published by the IFS, the Education Endowment Foundation and the Social Mobility Commission detailing the persistent and highly damaging impacts of school closures, exacerbating inequalities and reversing progress previously made to narrow the attainment gap.
I am thinking of the work done by the Centre for Social Justice showing that some children who were told to stay at home during the pandemic never reacquired the habit of attending school, with severe absences—defined as missing at least 50% of lessons—tripling compared to pre-pandemic levels. In the summer term of 2024, 172,938 English schoolchildren were severely absent. Incredibly, the number of persistently absent children—defined as missing at least 10% of lessons—climbed to 1.6 million last summer.
I am thinking of the data accumulated from children and young people now about the deterioration in children’s mental health since the school closures. Some 1.3 million schoolchildren were referred to mental health support services in the school year 2023-24—a 71% increase on the pre-pandemic year of 2018-19.
Some will argue that these costs, while undoubtedly high, were outweighed by the benefits in terms of infections averted and lives saved, but children were at negligible risk from Covid-19. According to the ONS, between March 2020 and October 2022 in England and Wales, 88 deaths of children under the age of 18 were registered as being due to Covid-19. That is 0.05% of the total number of Covid deaths in the same period. To put that figure in perspective, between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2022, 644 children died from accidents.
In any event, closing schools did not make children less likely to become infected. A study published by the Public Health Agency of Sweden in 2020 found that infection rates were no higher among schoolchildren in Sweden, which closed sixth forms but no other schools, than they were in Finland, which closed all schools.
What about adults? Did closing schools protect them? We are in the realm of counterfactuals here, but if we look at Sweden again, the evidence is that, no, keeping schools open did not mean that more people were at risk of becoming infected and dying from Covid-19. According to the ONS, Sweden’s overall excess mortality between March 2020 and July 2022 was negative —namely, lower than the pre-pandemic average—and far lower than in the UK, where schools were closed. In fact, Sweden’s excess mortality was the lowest of all European countries, except Norway. Incidentally, Norway did close schools, but the Prime Minister at the time apologised for doing so.
The costs of closing schools were almost incalculable and the benefits non-existent. It was a catastrophic error. Nevertheless, this amendment does not rule out ever closing schools again during future public health or civil emergencies. All it does is make it a statutory requirement, before schools are closed, to seek the advice of the Children’s Commissioner on the likely impact of such action on the children and young people affected by it and to have due regard for the Children’s Commissioner’s advice. It also makes it necessary to secure the approval of Parliament, with such approval needing to be renewed every two weeks if schools are to remain closed.
It was a mistake to close schools during the pandemic and we should take whatever steps we can to avoid making it again. I beg to move.