Minister doesn’t always know best
Nick Gibb always knows best
The schools go back today. For many kids, it will be their first time in a classroom since December.
Back in December, my daughter’s primary school had a packed programme for the end of term, including cute-as-hell Christmas shows being broadcast from the classrooms to the parents on Zoom. They wanted to keep the kids in school for as long as possible.
But by 14th December, Covid infections in Waltham Forest were surging and the data suggested exceptionally high infection rates amongst kids.
As a result, the school made a late decision on Monday night to shift the last four days of term online.
So the next day (the 15th), the children logged onto Google Classroom and schools minister Nick Gibb wrote a letter to the school’s headteacher threatening legal action if she didn’t reopen.
It is hard to remember given what happened just days later, but at the time, the Government was storming all over the place, threatening legal action if councils and schools didn’t submit.
Our school hastily reversed their decision and the kids went back in for the last three days of term.
It was a hokey-cokey end to term: in-out-in-out.
Over the course of the next week, 120 children from my daughter’s school were told to self-isolate because they’d come into contact with someone with Covid. Just four days after sending the headteacher a stinky letter, the Government placed the whole of the South-East into lockdown when it turned out a mutant virus was spreading rapidly in East London… among children.
Just seven days after that letter, Upper Walthamstow (the area in which I live and in which the school is located) recorded more than 1,000 Covid cases per 100,000: one of the highest ever recorded in the UK at that time.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because the farce for my kids was based on a familiar problem we see in public transport: Whitehall knows best.
The teachers had been desperate to give the kids a ‘normal’ end of term but they could see what was going on around them. The local data was telling them a story they couldn’t ignore and they could sense that something had changed.
But Whitehall overruled them and the kids were sent back. Given what we all know about how Covid works, that decision will have cost lives.
Thankfully, the relationships between local and centre in transport aren’t generally matters of life and death. But the culture that Whitehall knows best runs deep in this country. Especially in Whitehall…
