The former joint General secretary of the National Education Union has claimed that the UK Government “should have done more” to prevent school closures during the coronavirus pandemic.
As Covid-19 swept across the globe, the UK Government ordered all schools to close, forcing Britain’s children to continue their education at home.
However, schools remained open for vulnerable and key worker children, as teachers continued to deliver their lessons for their pupils as best they could.
Reflecting on the impact of school closures in 2023, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said the government had “no choice” but to send pupils home, and in her role it was her “first duty” to protect the safety of pupils, teachers and school workers.
Kevin Courtney admits government ‘should have done more’ to prevent school closures
GB News
Discussing the impact on schools and its teachers during the pandemic, former joint General secretary of the National Education Union Kevin Courtney criticised the Government for “not doing more” to prevent the closures.
However, Courtney admitted that at the time, he believes they “made the right call” with the information and science they had.
Speaking to Neil Oliver on GB News, Courtney made clear that schools were “never completely closed”, and the National Education Union had advocated against full closures of Britain’s schools at the time.
Courtney added that the union “thought Sage were right and were “going with the bulk of scientific thought” on the matter.
Key worker children and vulnerable children were still able to attend school during the pandemic
PA
Courtney recalled: “In January 2021, we were calling for schools to close. Boris Johnson on a Sunday night said the schools were open. We were saying they should close the next day.
“He changed his mind and said the schools should close. He did that I think because of the evidence from sage.”
Reacting to Courtney’s view, Molly Kingsley of campaign group UsForThem, which fought to reopen schools during Covid, said she had “sympathy” for the union and the teachers, and claimed that “many of us might accept” that the danger to adults in schools was “rather overinflated”.
Kingsley told GB News: “At the time there was a real perception that adults, perhaps all of them, perhaps a subset, were in real danger.
“I don’t blame the teaching unions for that. I’ve put the blame of that squarely at the door of government. I think at the same time, the harms of school closures were either downplayed or perhaps not taken into account in the way they could have been.”
She continued: “We never heard the equivalent about the other side of the equation, the harms to children. And I don’t just mean learning loss. I mean what happens to children when you shut down childhood often asking them to be in environments which we sadly now know are unsafe?
“What happens to children when you put them in front of screens when you move their whole lives to phones? And I think had we maybe balanced that, we may have come to a different conclusion.”
Molly Kingsley says we ‘don’t know the harms to children’ in taking them out of school during the pandemic
GB News
Courtney was in agreement with Kingsley, and admitted that the Government “should have done more” in preventing long term closures for schools during the pandemic.
Courtney explained: “I absolutely agree that closing schools does have huge consequences, and they’re not good consequences.
“If you’re a disadvantaged child, the consequences are worse. If you’re at home and you’ve got a nice private garden and you’ve got your own bedroom and you’ve got your own iPad, that’s very different to being in a fifth floor flat and no space whatsoever.
“I think the cities have been bad for children, and our government should have been doing more to make sure the school closures could should be as short as possible. Our school closures were longer than many other countries.”
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