Boris Johnson has admitted that Covid rules probably went “too far” for children and that youngsters paid a “huge price” to protect others during the pandemic.
Giving evidence at the Covid inquiry on Tuesday, the former prime minister said children could have been exempt from strict social distancing rules which were put in place during lockdown to stem the spread of the virus.
Mr Johnson went on to insist shutting schools during the pandemic was a “nightmare idea” which he wanted to avoid at all costs and that he “had a personal horror” over the idea, fearing the impact of shuttered classrooms on the least well off.
He also admitted that the exam system put in place during the pandemic “let down a lot of kids”. It came after the former prime minister was shown a document drawn up by the Department for Education (DfE) in March 2020, warning that closures would mean almost 9 million pupils could not be guaranteed an education.
“I think that looking back on it all, the whole lockdowns, the intricacy of the rules, the rule of six, the complexity, particularly for children, I think we probably did go too far and it was far too elaborate,” Mr Johnson told the inquiry.
“Maybe we could have found a way of exempting children.”
He added: “It felt to me as though children who are not particularly vulnerable to Covid were paying a huge, huge price to protect the rest of society. And it was an awful, awful thing.
“As I said, I wish it had been otherwise. I wish we could have found another solution.”
During the evidence, the former prime minister told how he was left in a “homicidal” mood and wanted to sack his education secretary over the exam grading fiasco during the pandemic.
He admitted the system his government implemented to award exam grades to pupils who had not sat assessments “plainly let down a lot of kids”, after many children’s results during the pandemic did not reflect their abilities.
The widely criticised system, established during the pandemic when pupils across the country had their education disrupted for months, is one of the things he “very much regrets”, he added.
The comments came as Mr Johnson was asked about the system which saw GCSE pupils receive predicted grades instead of exam results.
Criticism of the system includes that private schools gave out more generous grades during the pandemic than state schools, while some students faced discrimination in their predicted grades.
“I was not expert enough to comment on whether it was viable or not, but plainly, it let down a lot of kids whose grades did not reflect their abilities and their achievements,” Mr Johnson told the inquiry.
In a WhatsApp message to his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings, shown to the inquiry, Mr Johnson said at the time he was in a “homicidal mood” over the fiasco.
He said: “We need a plan for the dept of education. We need a perm sec and we need better ministers and quite frankly we need an agenda of reform. We can’t go on like this. I am thinking of going into number ten and firing people.”
But, pressed on the implementation of the system, an irate Mr Johnson said: “All I would say is … you try coming up with a system to come up with a fair exam result for people when they can’t sit exams.
“It’s not easy… OK?”
The DfE document which was shown to Mr Johnson warned that 1.3 million of the poorest children would not receive a free school meal, while remote learning would fail many kids. It also warned that the most vulnerable children are much safer in school, and that school closures would put many at risk of domestic violence or youth crime.
“I had a personal horror of closing schools, I thought it was a nightmare thing to do and I thought it would do a lot of damage to people who would find it the most difficult to bounce back and cope,” Mr Johnson told the inquiry.
Mr Johnson also denied the government had failed to prepare for school closures, saying discussions had been taking place since the pandemic emerged.
Last week, former education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson told the inquiry he had not asked DfE officials to prepare an assessment on the impact of school closures in early 2020, as the advice at the time “was not recommending closures” and No 10 had not commissioned it.
In his written evidence, Sir Gavin described a “discombobulating 24-hour sea-change” from keeping schools open on 16 March to talking about closing them on 17 March, and an announcement to shut them made the following day.
On Tuesday, Mr Johnson insisted work had been done to plan for school closures, saying: “If you look at the sequence from February onwards, it’s clear that Sage [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] is talking about the possibility, the cabinet is discussing it in March.
“Certainly I remember the subject coming up repeatedly.” And he praised Sir Gavin’s efforts as education secretary, adding: “I think that, on the whole, given the difficulties that we faced, that the department under Gavin did a pretty heroic job in trying to cope with covid.”
Mr Johnson added he had received a note from the DfE on 15 March asking for a meeting on the subject “in which they go over all kinds of stuff that are going to be necessary to enact school closures”, including safeguarding, exams and teacher training.
He said he would not have expected the DfE to wait for an instruction from No 10 before planning for closures, and he was “surprised that the permanent secretary at the DfE didn’t feel that it was necessary to look at what contingency arrangements we had”.
The former PM said: “I just think that it was obvious that there had to be consideration of closing schools.
“I was very much hoping that we wouldn’t have to close schools. I thought it was a nightmare idea.”
Asked if he accepts that until March 2020 there had not been a cross-government focus on schools, Mr Johnson said: “No, I don’t really accept that.”
He added: “I think there had already been conversations about the possibility of closing schools. And it looked to me as though the DfE was preparing for that.”
But Mr Johnson acknowledged that the “full horror” of the pandemic was “slow to dawn on the government”.
“Don’t forget, we didn’t know the effect this disease had on kids. We didn’t know much about the transmissibility of the disease. There were all sorts of things that were simply unknown and difficult to plan for,” he said.
