Boris Johnson rejected claims that his government failed to prepare for school closures at the outbreak of the pandemic, telling the Covid-19 inquiry that it would be “amazing” if the Department for Education (DfE) had not realised that plans were needed.
Gavin Williamson, the then education secretary, had told the inquiry that he hadn’t acted sooner because “there was no suggestion that the Department for Education should prepare a plan or a policy for mass school closures”.
Johnson disputed Williamson’s claim, and said that DfE memos presented in mid-March “certainly indicates to me now that work was going on in the DfE about school closures. And it’d be amazing if it wasn’t”.
The former prime minister added: “It was my impression that the work was being done. Let me put it this way, I certainly assumed that the work was being done.”
Johnson also rebutted statements by Jonathan Slater, the DfE’s permanent secretary at the time, that the department’s first request for a detailed closure plan did not arrive until 17 March, the day before the official announcement that schools would close.
“Frankly, I would have thought that he, as head of the Department for Education, would have picked up from discussions that would be going on from February onwards,” Johnson said, adding: “I just think that it was obvious that there had to be consideration of closing schools.”
In testimony as part of the inquiry’s investigation into the impact on children and young people, Johnson made it clear he initially believed school closures would be necessary only at the peak of the pandemic, until scientific advice changed to say closures would help stop Covid’s rapid spread.
“It felt to me as though children, who are not vulnerable to Covid, were paying a huge, huge price to protect the rest of society. It was an awful thing. I wish we had found another solution,” Johnson said.
In his testimony last week, Gavin Williamson told the inquiry that Johnson’s government had made “many mistakes” regarding school closures. He also said that Johnson often “chose the NHS over children”.
Offered an opportunity to criticise Williamson for his performance, Johnson said: “I think that on the whole, given the difficulties that we faced, I think that the department under Gavin did a pretty heroic job in trying to cope with Covid, and that was my judgment.”
Asked to explain the chaos surrounding efforts to award GCSE and A-level exam results in 2020 using an algorithm, which was abruptly scrapped after it became clear that grades were being awarded unfairly, Johnson said: “I’m afraid that it was an accident of the great difficulties we faced in improvising in exceptionally difficult circumstances.”
The inquiry also heard that Priti Patel, the home secretary during the pandemic, raised alarms over the DfE’s failures to consider the impact of school closures on children vulnerable to drugs, violence and sexual exploitation.
Home Office officials reported that Patel felt Williamson “didn’t really seem to take on board” the potential dangers, according to an email from March 2020.
Matthew Rycroft, the Home Office’s senior civil servant during the pandemic, said: “The Home Office continued to engage with the Department for Education at all levels to make our concerns clear. And the reason we had concerns was that we knew what happens to levels of domestic abuse, to levels of child sexual exploitation when schools are closed, because that’s what happens every holiday.”
