School closures in Covid were a great betrayal of our kids

HAD low expectations for the 'Children's Module', of the Covid Inquiry which has just wrapped up but even those were dashed after listening to four weeks of horribly illuminating and, paradoxically, bitterly pre-dictable evidence.

- Molly Kingsley

LOCKED OUT: Politicians and unelected officials have caused children lasting harm

The latest chapter of this glacial, costly and tunnel-visioned inquiry started at the end of September half a decade after the first mass school closures of spring 2020 had ended. On one level, it revealed little that wasn't achingly obvious: that school closures were a disaster for children whose interests were shamefully underrepresented in decision-making. Yet listening to the granular detail of the many failings across four weeks was still astonishing.

From Gavin Williamson, then Education Secretary, detailing that his Department had not been involved in key decisions concerning schools; to the former Children's Commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield who revealed that she was informed about school closures the evening before (a gesture she graciously described as "a courtesy", but which seemed anything but); to Chris Whitty rueing the damage done to kids by overdone lockdown rules, this was a wholesale failure by the state to protect more than 10 million children.