Have we turned into a country that hates children?

My daughter’s school is back to home learning, with buildings crumbling and maternity units not fit for purpose, it sometimes feels that way, writes Melanie McDonagh. It’s time we started putting our children first.

Schools should be a safe place for our children, the fact that some are being deemed life-threatening speaks volumes (Getty)

It’s September, so it’s back to school for the young folk. But only if you’re lucky. This year, because of the possibility of a concrete ceiling falling on an entire class – like Chicken Licken, only for real – some children haven’t returned in the normal way. My daughter has started sixth form in a new school and the first letter from the head was to say that the fifth form and upper sixth would be learning remotely while the contractors were in. Like the pandemic, all over again.

This week we learned that the overhaul of school buildings was one of the first casualties of the coalition government’s austerity measures in 2010, when the then-education secretary, Michael Gove, scrapped the Building Schools for the Future capital spending programme, something he now regrets. It was, admittedly, an ambitious project but if the overhaul of existing buildings had been maintained, we probably wouldn’t be in this state. Did schools, did children, get quite the priority they deserved during the austerity years? Doesn’t look like it, does it?

Which makes you wonder: have we turned into a country that actually hates its children? This isn’t to suggest that anyone actively wants children flattened but somehow, the present situation is symptomatic of our nation’s approach to young folk.