14. DfE's FOI response: Williamson threatening Greenwich with court action - Dec 2020

Jenny Harries' evidence for why the council was threatened with court action to stay open for the final few days of school after the Alpha variant was identified

Part 14 of this review examines the government's response when asked for the evidence the DfE claimed supported the decision to threaten councils with court action.

• DfE didn’t provide the evidence requested

• False claims about schools being controlled environments

• Jenny Harries claimed keeping students in school could reduce transmission

• Alpha variants impact on schools and children dismissed

Last week of term before Christmas 2020

With a rapid rise in cases in their area, the councils of South Greenwich, Waltham Forest and Islington announced they would be moving to remote learning for the last week of the term. The Education Secretary Gavin Williamson responded by writing to the councils, enacting laws set out in the Covid Bill which threatened to take the councils to the High Court if they didn’t immediately tell students to return to school. As a sign of his attention to detail Williamson dated the letter 2010.

Unfortunately, the political opposition to Williamson was missing in action with the Labour Party refusing to back the councils, simply stating that "the best place for children is in school."

A number of legal experts said Williamson's threats could be challenged, but unfortunately they give in.

At the time I thought it was a tactical error, the government had managed to gaslight transmission in schools, many were unaware of just how chaotic it was just trying to keep schools open. Some in the media were still claiming there was no evidence of a single case of someone working in a school contracting covid from a student despite Hancock having admitted school age students were driving transmission.

Covid in schools had been almost completely cut out of the news cycles until those three councils had gone rogue.

 Putting schools back into the headlines in such a way allowed the voices of those working on the front lines to gain a wider audience after months of gaslighting. Even though sections of the media rolled out what was now a stocklist of misleading quotes from flawed studies, this was still a big week in the covid narrative in the UK as more parents and commentators began to ask what conditions would be like when students returned in January. At this point the government was planning on students returning in full to schools with the same ineffective measures they finished the autumn term with. During the final week of term the death toll went over 500 a day.

Schoolsweek submitted a FOI to see what scientific advice guided Williamson's decision. 

It starts with the tired statement that school is good for children, which wasn't relevant when the issue is about amplifying transmission in the community The statement from Jenny Harries refers to a briefing to London leaders, however the FOI response does not provide the information from that briefing which is what the FOI requested. Instead the FOI provides Harries' interpretation of that data.

The response says there had been "no direct advice from PHE to close schools" which is a phrase that could be doing a lot of heavy lifting. Do PHE ever give "direct advice"? This seems like a very specific phrase which could mean that PHE stated the implications of keeping schools open without advising a course of action, or provided general advice.

The 3rd bullet point is the most bizarre, London leaders spent 2 weeks asking for support and all they got back was an empty statement that education is a national priority, its no wonder they gave up and tried to take matters into their own hands. Harries also claimed that allowing schools could increase transmission because cases weren't being detected by testing in schools. Just on the face of it, this seems an illogical argument, if the children aren't in school then they have less chance of being infected or of transmitting to others in school.

But there is a greater issue with this statement, what testing is Harries referring to? The mass testing announced by Hancock on the 10 December wasn't being conducted on school sites, mobile testing units had been set up in neighbourhood to increase access to PCR testing with students and staff advised to go to the nearest test and trace site.Lateral flow testing in schools began in 2021, so what testing did Harries mean? The journalist who sent the FOI said it had been suggested that there might be trials on testing being conducted in some schools in these councils, but if there was it would have only been a handful of schools.

As an argument for keeping Greenwich schools open for three additional days this appears to be completely incoherent.

The fourth point saying schools could stay open because they are "controlled environments" is gaslighting. Schools were the only space where over a thousand people could gather indoors without masks, social distancing or ventilation, even in the areas of the country with the highest rates of infection, how is that a "controlled environment"?

Less than a week before this the Health Secretary Matt Hancock had said schools were driving infection in these areas, promising additional surge testing. Data from the ONS published the month before had shown that since schools returned in September children were most likely to be the index case in a household. Schools were not “controlled environments”.

The FOI response then moves onto the actions of the DfE.

As with Harries’ section of the response, the DfE says scientific advice didn’t support schools closing a few days early for the holidays, but hasn’t provided the evidence the DfE was being guided by, which is what the FOI requested. 

The DfE’s Contingency Framework is mentioned, however having been created in case of an emergency such as covid growing out of control (as it was in December 2020), the framework was never implemented. It’s worth noting that one of the key organisations in deciding to implement the framework is the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), Set up  in July 2020 as the top organisation to manage the pandemic at an initial cost of £9 billion, the JBC committee includes the Health Secretary, the CMO’s of the home nations, and the heads of the security services, however besides deciding on covid warning levels there has never been any public information regarding the JBC’s role in the development of policy. 

The FOI response concludes by covering advice concerning the then newly identified B117 variant which would later be named Alpha. 

Matt Hancock had announced the new variant to the House of Commons on the 14 December, the same day the DfE decided to threaten to take action against Greenwich council

We can't see the actual advice provided by NERVTAG to the government as the FOI response contained an updated document from 23rd December which did state that increased mitigations would be required to try to keep schools open. However this does show the government wasn't following its own scientific advice for initially expecting all schools back in January with no changes. NERVTAG advised changing the operation of schools, enforcing 2m social distancing, mask use etc, none of these were acted on for the plans for schools to return in January. 

Conclusion

The reasons giving for strong arming schools to stay open for a few more days fails to meet the precautionary principle considering the risks at the time of high infection rates with the growth of an unknown new variant which turned out to not just be more transmissible but also to cause more severe illness. Considering vaccination was just begining, unnecessary risks were taken with no regard made for the health of students or education workers.

Considering revelations in the UKs covid inquiry regarding the influence of certain right wing papers; in particularly the Telegraph, it would appear Johnson’s government was more concerned about appeasing newspaper editors than protecting public health.

The question must be asked if this incident leaves the government open for a case of gross negligence..