Pressure mounts to re-open primary schools by May half term after catastrophic economic forecast
The government is coming under mounting pressure to re-open primary schools before the May half term, as catastrophic Office for Budget Responsibility figures forecast the economy will shrink by 35 per cent due to the coronavirus lockdown.
A number of ministers are understood to be agitating for younger pupils to return to the classroom as soon as May 11 amid fears the restrictions cannot feasibly be relaxed until workers' children are back in full-time education.
It had previously been suggested that at the earliest, pupils would not be back until after the Whitsun half term, which begins on May 25, the late Spring bank holiday.
It comes as the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), the governments’ chief scientific advisers met on Tuesday to review the lockdown.
The government is expected to extend the measures for a further three weeks on Thursday, taking the possible end date to May 7.
One cabinet minister told The Telegraph: “We have got to make sure this economic downturn is V-shaped and not L-shaped. We should be beginning to release the things that can be released - so primary schools should re-open and so should non-essential shops. If you can go into Sainsbury’s to buy non-essential items while observing social distancing rules, why can you not do that in other shops?”
Dismissing fears that parents might be fearful of term time resuming for fear of their children inadvertently spreading the virus to grandparents, they added: “It looks like elderly and vulnerable people are going to be kept in self-isolation for six months rather than three.”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the Conservative Party, agreed, saying: “Schools are important because they enable parents to go back to work, particularly primary schools because those are the children who are too young to be left at home alone. Re-opening primary schools is the key to unlocking labour.”
Working in tandem with the Treasury, Downing Street is said to be formulating plans for a gradual easing of the restrictions on a sector-by-sector basis.
But one Tory source said Education Secretary Gavin Williamson had been “flip-flopping’ on the issue of re-opening schools, saying: “He’s not really a decision maker. One minute he seems to believe schools should re-open but the next he’s being overly cautious. It’s hard to work out where he stands on it from one day to the next but he is having to balance a lot of competing interests.”
On Tuesday, one teachers’ union wrote to the government claiming its members are ‘disturbed’ by suggestions schools could reopen.
The letter to the Prime Minister from the National Education Union read: “Given that in re-opening schools and colleges, you would be asking our members to take an increased risk, we believe they have a right to understand fully how any such proposal belongs within an overall Government strategy to defeat the virus.”
When Boris Johnson announced the lockdown on March 23, prompting GCSE and A-Level exams to be cancelled, it had been suggested that schools may not re-open until after the summer holidays in September.
But calls for a sooner return have been fuelled by research by University College London which found keeping pupils off has had little impact, even with other lockdown measures.
Recent modelling studies of Covid-19 predict that school closures alone would prevent only two to four per cent of deaths, many fewer than other social distancing interventions.
The government had expected 20 per cent of children to stay in schools after the lockdown was put in place, but actually just two per cent of vulnerable pupils and the children of key workers have carried on attending.
A Number 10 insider said Mr Johnson’s gradual return to work following a week in intensive care, along with his chief adviser Dominic Cummings following his own coronavirus isolation “would have an impact on the dynamic of the lockdown”.
The insider said: “Dom is worried about lifting the restrictions too early and Britain suffering a second Covid-19 wave in the autumn which could cause even greater economic damage.”
However, another source pointed out that as a former advisor to Michael Gove when he was education secretary, Mr Cummings would “not have much truck with the teaching unions.”
Another Tory source suggested that the government was “seriously considering” bringing in weekly reviews of the restrictions rather than the three-week assessments recommended by Public Health England (PHE). “They are going to keep this under a more regular review. You won’t see them referring to ending the lockdown but adapting it. They may extend for three weeks but that’s in name, really - you can redefine a lockdown in the middle of it.”
A cabinet minister suggested that the ultimate decision would lie with Mr Johnson, who is currently convalescing at Chequers.
“The Prime Minister is almost in the perfect position of being at Chequers and not at Downing Street so he can direct things and say what he wants without having to sit through boring meetings he has little patience for. He can focus on quality rather than quantity.”
Insisting that Mr Johnson would continue to not only be led by the science but also the public mood, they added: “While children are still on their Easter holidays then support for the lockdown remains, but what really changes people’s minds is when their nextdoor neighbours start losing their jobs. They are seeing news of hundreds more ventilators coming in, of the Nightingale up and running and intensive care units coping. Lifting the lockdown will require an active decision by the PM but only when the public is ready for it.”
A Government spokesperson said: “Schools will remain closed until further notice, except for children of critical workers and the most vulnerable children. We will only re-open schools when the scientific advice indicates it is safe to do so, and will work closely with the sector to agree our approach.”
