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Boris Johnson has denied there was a failure to plan for Covid school closures at the start of the pandemic, saying it would be “surprising” if there had been no planning. The former prime minister told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on Tuesday that it was “obvious” there would need to be “consideration of closing schools” and “it looked to me as though the DfE (Department for Education) was preparing for that”. Last week, former education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson told the inquiry he had not asked DfE officials to prepare an assessment on the impact of school closures in early 2020, as the advice at the time “was not recommending closures” and Number 10 had not commissioned it. In his written evidence, Sir Gavin described a “discombobulating 24-hour sea-change” from keeping schools open on March 16 to talking about closing them on March 17, and an announcement to shut them made the following day. On Tuesday, Mr Johnson insisted work had been done to plan for school closures, saying: “If you look at the sequence from February onwards, it’s clear that Sage (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) is talking about the possibility, the Cabinet is discussing it in March. “Certainly I remember the subject coming up repeatedly.” Mr Johnson added he had received a note from the DfE on March 15 asking for a meeting on the subject “in which they go over all kinds of stuff that are going to be necessary to enact school closures”, including safeguarding, exams and teacher training. He added he would not have expected the DfE to wait for an instruction from Number 10 before planning for closures and he was “surprised that the permanent secretary at the DfE didn’t feel that it was necessary to look at what contingency arrangements we had”. He said: “I just think that it was obvious that there had to be consideration of closing schools. “I was very much hoping that we wouldn’t have to close schools. I thought it was a nightmare idea.” Asked if he accepts that until March 2020 there had not been a cross-government focus on schools, Mr Johnson said: “No, I don’t really accept that.” He added: “I think there had already been conversations about the possibility of closing schools. And it looked to me as though the DfE was preparing for that.” At the inquiry last week, Sir Gavin criticised Mr Johnson’s decision in May 2020 to announce a phased return to schools as “damaging” to schools, children and families. He added he thought the then prime minister chose the NHS over children when making school closure decisions in January 2021.
