Do you think that at times what we have referred to as ‘the science’ has got it wrong?

[MarshaBradyo]

I’m thinking about the many times people said well it’s going to go badly wrong and the science backs this up

But a few times this hasn’t happened

July opening
Omicron and not doing ‘circuit breaker’ and not ending in lockdown
Not getting close to best case for omicron

And so on - maybe other examples

What do you think - was it unnecessarily pessimistic?

He is great and I’ve appreciated his measured responses (although omicron line I didn’t love)

He is really good at knowing his role and remit though and is clever enough to say where his remit ends and greater decisions for society are taken.

Also read the Swedish reports with interest regarding schools. The conclusion: ‘keeping schools open lead to no higher rates of infection amongst its school children compared to neighbouring Finland who closed them’.

Also, finally some studies coming out showing children spread Covid much less than adults (which was obvious all along.)

Our worst mistake was not opening the schools after Easter in the first lockdown. Rates were lower going in to Summer. Pubs were open but schools weren’t. That will look good in a historical analysis. Sending everyone back at the same time in September was one of the government’s worse decisions.

Anyway. This Swedish study will be the first of many showing the harms of lockdowns (or the benefits of avoiding lockdowns)and the impact of school closures on all children (is it £40,000 this generation will lose in earning power over their lives I read?). More and more will come out. Maybe Swedish children are different to British kids though. Maybe they wash their hands better or something...

"Recent data published by the Financial Times show that countries that have done worse in terms of covid deaths have also done worse economically, with the UK scoring badly on both counts. This suggests that it’s a false dichotomy to talk about health versus wealth and that we have to control the virus to restore our economy. Is that how you see things?

Whitty - That is absolutely how I see things."

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4235

He also says " I’m only presenting the health advice."

@Delatron

Also read the Swedish reports with interest regarding schools. The conclusion: ‘keeping schools open lead to no higher rates of infection amongst its school children compared to neighbouring Finland who closed them’.

Also, finally some studies coming out showing children spread Covid much less than adults (which was obvious all along.)

Our worst mistake was not opening the schools after Easter in the first lockdown. Rates were lower going in to Summer. Pubs were open but schools weren’t. That will look good in a historical analysis. Sending everyone back at the same time in September was one of the government’s worse decisions.

Anyway. This Swedish study will be the first of many showing the harms of lockdowns (or the benefits of avoiding lockdowns)and the impact of school closures on all children (is it £40,000 this generation will lose in earning power over their lives I read?). More and more will come out. Maybe Swedish children are different to British kids though. Maybe they wash their hands better or something...

So I have done a quick Google.

Apparently, the average class size in Swedish secondary schools is 19.

The spend per child in Swedish secondary schools is about £9.5k compared to our spend of £6.5k (and my DC's school has a spend of £5.5k).

Smaller classes would mean less spread of infection, yes.

A number of people on here were arguing that we should re-open schools but put in place measures to make them safer (and also more effective places of learning, I don't know whether you remember these discussions?)

Countries which already have outdoor learning and smaller class sizes, and also well funded educational systems, might indeed be better placed to come through a pandemic with less disruption to education, don't you think?

They may @herecomesthsun but that does not mean we should have kept the schools shut for as long as we did, with all the devastating impact. Just because there’s 10 more per class. We won’t agree on this ever.

But I guess time will tell. And as I said I’ll read all the reports that are coming out with interest. We have done our children a huge disservice. I feel we should have followed a different strategy and children should not have bourne the brunt of the the restrictions. They should have had their sports clubs, their playgrounds open. (Pubs were open! White middle class men could play golf!) You won’t change my mind on that and we will continue to disagree!

keeping schools open lead to no higher rates of infection amongst its school children compared to neighbouring Finland who closed them

Kids being at school didn't have any impact on their infection rates? That sounds bizarre, and certainly doesn't fit with the data from here where infection rates in children were certainly and obviously affected by whether they were in school or not, even matching school holidays.

is it £40,000 this generation will lose in earning power over their lives I read?

You read it, but it was bollocks.

I didn't say we should have kept schools shut for longer.

If it were up to me, I would have put a lot of resources into keeping schools open .

Of course, you might not agree with that?

I actually suggested lots of ways to keep the schools open. Such as outdoor learning and marquees..
Or staggered schedules. I have no idea why my Yr6 went back for weeks when my Yr5 couldn’t. There were lots of things that could have been done.

As regards earning power, it's hard to know really.

What about all the kids from independent schools who found themselves with A*s at A level that they wouldn't otherwise have had? Will that boost their earning power? God only knows.

Of course this generation will never catch up on their education. The reports coming out are shocking. Of course they will suffer loss of earnings. Don’t minimise the impact of lockdowns and lack of education on children. You don’t come out of that argument looking great..

'We should have opened schools sooner' is a different discussion to 'we should never have closed schools'.

Certainly mistakes were made around the school re-openings in June. The targeted year group approach was wrong, and because the govt focus was entirely on getting parents back to work, they basically didn't bother with secondary.

@Delatron

Of course this generation will never catch up on their education. The reports coming out are shocking. Of course they will suffer loss of earnings. Don’t minimise the impact of lockdowns and lack of education on children. You don’t come out of that argument looking great..

The IFS report based its loss of earnings calculation on the idea that a pupil missing long periods of school will come out with lower qualifications.

It cannot be extended to an entire cohort who all miss the same amount of school because the grade distribution is fixed each year. The cohort cannot perform worse than the previous year groups because that's not how the exams are graded.

And as mentioned, due to CAGs and TAGs, the most recent cohorts have actually been awarded much higher grades than they would have achieved pre-pandemic.

Therefore, no predictions can be made about lost earnings due to lower qualifications.

The effects of lockdown depend a lot on the individual children involved and what they had access to.

The head of one of my kids' schools says that he is not expecting much in the way of lasting educational problems for the pupils because it is a highly selective school and the kids are motivated and selected for ability. I tend to believe him (as he is very good at his job and an expert in his field).

I am sure the situation would be different elsewhere.

I think the response of the government in terms of providing opportunities, bursaries, educational catch up support etc is also pretty important.

That’s great for the kids at the highly selective school yes.

not great but they are getting on with their lives

I think we should have had the catch up funding, especially for those kids who are struggling - it might be a very good investment.

@Delatron

I actually suggested lots of ways to keep the schools open. Such as outdoor learning and marquees.. Or staggered schedules. I have no idea why my Yr6 went back for weeks when my Yr5 couldn’t. There were lots of things that could have been done.

Yep my then year five was home twice

It was too harsh - especially as hospitalisation was so low then.

What will happen to the next few exam years then when the grade inflation settles down? I’m not just talking about this year’s cohort. What about the studies on how far reception age children are behind? You can’t argue there has been no impact in the same way as it’s unclear right now what the impact will be for years to come.

There will be an impact though. For many children, in many areas.

I think we should prioritise education. But then, I have always thought that.

Bad news on the catch-up front, herecomes. The catch-up programme has been a complete disaster. The DfE ballsed-up the procurement process, outsourced to a Dutch firm with no experience, and schools haven't been able to get tutors. Barely any kids have had the tuition.

However, current Y11 are set to get better grades in their GCSEs and A-levels than the 2019 cohort.

I thought they had refused to pay the recommended amount and the catch-up tsar had resigned? Was there a change of heart?

What will happen to the next few exam years then when the grade inflation settles down?

The grade distributions are fixed. The grades that are awarded to students depend on their position within the year group, NOT on the standard of work they produce.

They will go back to the 2019 distributions.

@herecomesthsun

I thought they had refused to pay the recommended amount and the catch-up tsar had resigned? Was there a change of heart?

The catch-up tsar wanted a £15 billion package of funding for things like tutoring, but also extending the school day to include more extra curricular activities and sport.

The actual amount awarded for catch-up was more like £3 billion (not sure of the final total, it was staggered) and entirely focused on tutoring which has been a failure.

What about the studies on how far reception age children are behind? You can’t argue there has been no impact in the same way as it’s unclear right now what the impact will be for years to come

Of course there's an impact. The stories from primary colleagues about how KS1 pupils have been affected are very concerning. I can see how school closures have impacted the social development of my Y7s and 8s in particular.

I've haven't said there hasn't been an impact on children, I just said that the '£40,000 lost earnings' figure was bollocks. Because it was.

So looking at Sweden’s suicide statistics - they are about 14 per 100 000. UK was 11 per 100 000 2019 and 10 per 100000 in 2020.

If lockdown was so utterly catastrophic, wouldn’t we be seeing something here? Would our rates be doubling, higher than Sweden? Or do so may other factors come into play that we must be careful about catastrophising.

Also - as a country Sweden is fairly remote, so they could have afforded a less stringent strategy. If Sweden were ‘right’, you can’t just apply their strategy to the UK - you need to apply it globally. And then what, in hindsight, what if it was discovered that that strategy was the ‘wrong’ global strategy. That being ‘wrong’ could have been potentially - horrific, with millions more deaths. And wasn’t that far too big a risk to take?

I don’t think we can say any country was ‘right’, especially at this stage. Of course every country is different and what works or worked in one country can’t be applied to all. Our Heathcare system wouldn’t have coped the way others might have done if we had done nothing.
See all those claiming we could have done a New Zealand. We could never have pursued that policy here.

What I do think is that we got the modelling very wrong a lot of the time and then the worst case scenarios were presented and fed to the media as facts. This meant we may have had a longer lockdown than necessary and many of the ‘rules’ were completely unnecessary and very harmful to businesses and certain sectors of society. We don’t know the long term effects of this yet.

We all have different opinions on this. I personally think schools should have been the last thing to close and the first thing to open. Others disagree.