The chances of a child dying from Covid is two in a million. It is more likely they will die getting hit by lightning. And yet on Monday, the Government unveiled plans for the mass vaccination of healthy 12- to 15-year-olds.
How did it come to this? The answer may lie in the chaos in schools over the past 18 months created by one disastrous policy after another, which has resulted in two years of cancelled exams and huge disruption to children’s education.
The answer, or so ministers appear to believe, is to vaccinate pupils to try and keep schools rather than run the risk of yet another term of turmoil.
Their first problem for the Government was that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) did not recommend the rollout. Earlier this month, it delivered its long-awaited verdict, saying the “margin of benefit” of jabbing 12 to 15-year-olds was “considered too small” and citing the low risk to healthy children from the virus.
Undeterred, Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, instructed Prof Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, to look again to see whether there was a wider benefit to society from vaccinating children.
Mr Javid said he wanted Prof Whitty and the chief medical officers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to “consider the vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds from a broader perspective”.
He said he would then “then consider the advice from the chief medical officers, building on the advice from the JCVI, before making a decision shortly”.
That decision is now inevitable given Monday’s announcement from Prof Whitty that vaccinating children will “reduce education disruption” and, as such, one dose should be offered to those aged 12 to 15.
Keeping schools open and free from disruption has become one of the cornerstones of the Government’s “learning to live with Covid” agenda.
From the start of the pandemic, ministers have come under fire over their disastrous policies towards schools. Over the past 18 months, they have been accused of treating children like second-class citizens, sacrificing not only their mental health and wellbeing but also their education and future prospects on the altar of Covid.
First they were accused of failing to act quickly enough to close schools in March 2020, despite cases spiralling out of control. Then after telling children to stay at home last spring, they failed to get them back to the classroom properly that September.
The Government came under mounting criticism over its inability to overcome the teaching unions and insist that all schools welcome pupils back during the summer term, only to close them down once more during the third national lockdown in January.
The fact that children remained at home last summer while shops, cinemas, theme parks and zoos were open last June left ministers open to criticism that they had failed to prioritise children’s education.
“It is not a good look if we are rushing to open pubs and beer gardens while the vast majority of schools are not open,” one of the Government’s scientific advisers said at the time.
A recent analysis of House of Commons data found that the UK closed schools for longer than anywhere in Europe, other than Italy, during the past 18 months.
“The Government has shown time and time again that children are an afterthought,” said Molly Kingsley, co-founder of the parent campaign group UsForThem.
“We have had a pattern over the past 18 months of decisions which have overlooked children’s welfare. Ministers have consistently failed to prioritise them in policy making.”
The prolonged school closures led to the cancellation of A-levels and GCSEs two years in a row, which has led to spiralling grade inflation which threatens to undermine the credibility of the entire exam system.
So, despite the JCVI’s pronouncement that the margin of benefit is “too small” to support the universal rollout of the Covid vaccine to children, the Government is pressing ahead with it not on health grounds alone, but on the ground that it will help to keep children in the classroom.
This is despite dozens of Tory MPs warning that overruling expert advice risks “dissolving the bond of trust” between the public and the Government.
Last week, 26 backbenchers wrote to Mr Javid saying that the Government’s willingness to “ignore” the JCVI is a cause for “serious concern”.
Prof Whitty acknowledged that while jabbing healthy children will help to reduce the chaos schools have faced over the past year-and-a-half, he also warned that it is not a “panacea” or a “silver bullet”.
“We are confident about reducing disruption, we are also confident that this will not eliminate disruption, that is very much central to how we want to present this information,” he told a press conference on Monday.
“It reduces the chance that a child will get Covid probably about 50-55 per cent, and it will reduce the chances that a child who then gets Covid will pass it on. We expect it will reduce the number of outbreaks in schools as well as a direct effect on children.
“But we definitely do not think… that this alone is going to be the thing that deals with education issues and it’s really important that policies are kept in place that minimise, or policies are not put in place that increase, the risk that further disruption will occur.”
Restrictions slowly creeping back
Official guidance states that if just five pupils or staff members test positive for Covid within 10 days and are likely to have mixed closely, schools can step up their measures.
This could include bringing back bubbles, which have been blamed for much of the disruption in schools over the past 18 months, face masks and even sending a year group home to isolate.
Schools across the country have already started introducing restrictions, just days into the new academic year. Some have mandated face masks to be worn in the classroom by all pupils and cancelled sports fixtures, while others have sent year groups home.
On Monday, Westgate Academy, a primary school in Lincoln, sent all children in Year 4 home after 15 staff and pupils tested positive.
Ilfracombe Academy in Devon sent home 32 of its Year 7 pupils to get PCR tests after they returned positive results with lateral flows.
Meanwhile, Princethorpe College, a Catholic secondary school in Warwickshire, reintroduced bubbles and face masks after just five days. The school also cancelled all sports fixtures with other schools for two year groups, until further notice.
“My daughter was unbelievably excited about sports matches because they were cancelled for all of last year,” one parent said. “She is really sporty and she couldn’t wait to get back into it.
“I am absolutely devastated because my daughter – and I’m sure a lot of them – were on such a high last week. They had the first week of normal education for 18 months. My fear is that now the sports have been cancelled, they won’t come back and now masks are back, they won’t come off.
“I really do think they have overstepped here. I have put up with this for a year and it has just got to end. These children have suffered enough.”
Teaching unions have been in favour of vaccinating children, warning that schools risk facing another term of chaos and spiralling pupil absences if further preventative measures are not introduced.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that vaccinating school-aged children is a “vital step” towards keeping them in the classroom.
Winning parents over
Perhaps the biggest problem for the Government will be convincing parents – and by extension, children – about the benefits of the vaccine versus the risk.
A survey by the charity Parentkind released findings on Monday that showed almost half, 46 per cent, of parents with children aged between 12 and 15 said they would not approve of their child being given a Covid jab or are undecided.
Uncertainty about giving the jabs to children did not seem to be linked to parental vaccine hesitancy, with 77 per cent of the survey’s respondents saying they had received a vaccine.
“The Government has got itself in an incredible mess,” Ms Kingsley said. “It’s precisely because their pandemic responses over the past 18 months have not considered children that the damage to children has been so great. Vaccinating children is not the answer.”