Opening schools is less about public health than politics by other means

Editorial: Coronavirus, as we’ve learned, recognises no borders, or morality, and the same worries as ever about the threat it poses still concern parents, teachers and indeed children

The words “moral duty” do not sit easily with what we know of our prime minister. So he is, as usual, pushing his luck when he tells teachers that they must open up the schools as some sort of act of valour. In education, Boris Johnson’s authority, moral or otherwise, only applies in England, but the same push to get the classrooms going is still more urgent and emphatic in Scotland, as they return this week. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister, calls it a “moral imperative”. Wales and Northern Ireland will follow soon.

Coronavirus, as we’ve learnt, recognises no borders, or morality, and the same worries as ever about the threat it poses still concern parents, teachers and indeed children.

The point is this: if it was previously thought that schools were places where the virus was ideally placed to spread rapidly across households earlier in the year, and they were therefore mostly closed down, what has changed? Why now is there this urgency, sense of moral purpose and priority?

One thing is simply that, apart from vulnerable children and those of Met workers, education has simply been in abeyance for too long, yielding a set of summer exam results no one has much faith in. Another major difference is that the scale and rate of Covid-19 infection is far lower now than in March and April. But there are substantial local or regional outbreaks, with an unwelcome trend in the national picture. The economy is also in far greater need of a boost coming out of its deep recession than it was at the outset.

In part, in fairness to Mr Johnson and his colleagues, the state of knowledge about Covid-19 has also progressed. But the scientific basis of the moral crusade to get the kids learning something again is uncertain.

It was suspected very early in the crisis that younger people are less susceptible to the more severe consequences of the disease, though there was always a minority of fatalities among the young, including a version of the distressing Kawasaki disease. That suspicion about comparatively mild symptoms has now become fact and common knowledge, but sometimes with the disturbing effect that some teenagers (and like Donald Trump) seem to assume they are immune, which they are not (though some studies do even suggest less likelihood of infection, despite youngsters’ beach-partying habits). Others in their twenties, say, think they are therefore less liable to carry and transmit Covid-19 to older friends and family, which is far from proven. The evidence on transmissibility by age seems quite debatable. Hence the “Don’t Kill Granny” campaign in newly locked down Preston.

But the current politicised and moralistic drive is not much concerned with peer-reviewed papers in academic circles. The familiar clash of opinion, prejudice and ideology is forming yet again along the lines set at least since the Brexit referendum campaign; our new cultural boundaries. As with masks and the whole legitimacy of the lockdown, it is less about public health than politics by other means. Thus, older, more working class Tory Leavers tend to want to see the schools alive again; but “safety first” is the cautious guiding principal of the Remainer progressives. As the teaching unions see things, their moral duty applies also to their own health and that of their families. By their nature, schools and children were not designed for social distancing or aerosol-free quietude.

Their teachers’ attitude is crucial because without their support education cannot return to normal. Some keyboard warriors on the field of this battle have accused the teaching unions of “holding the country to ransom”, just as the coal miners tried in the 1970s (successfully) and the 1980s (disastrously). Some have the backing of their local authorities, and some of parents. Confrontation seems to be approaching. What will Mr Johnson and the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, do if the unions simply refuse to cooperate? How will the usually more sympathetic Ms Sturgeon and her embattled education secretary John Swinney respond to union intransigence? Push is coming to shove.

Without the schools working properly again, the life chances of less well-off students will be blighted; and many workers, as parents having to care for their progeny, will be unable to return and help the economy’s recovery. That is an even more difficult dilemma to face as the furlough scheme is wound down. The government has made a vague commitment that employers should “consult” staff, but their right to require someone to turn up at an appointed hour has been restored. That will place many families in an impossible position. The signs are that the return to school may be a little patchier than ministers would wish.

The schools, then, are opening up and opening up a fresh front in Britain’s culture wars, something to occupy minds not otherwise distracted by taking “sides” about the pitiful human cargoes in dinghies making their way across the English Channel. And the end of the Brexit transition period is only a little over four months away, when Britain’s tribes can rejoin the original battlefield.