Parents deserve answers on schools and coronavirus

Boris Johnson had barely finished announcing the phased reopening of primary schools on Sunday night when my phone started buzzing with messages from concerned parents in our Year 1 WhatsApp group. The consensus was clear: to send your child back in June would be irresponsible parenting. Several said they refused to let their child be used as a ‘guinea pig’ for the virus and many emailed the headteacher to say so.

There were, however, a few lone dissenters – parents for whom the decision could not have come soon enough. It was clear a rapid class divide was emerging between middle class parents with work from home jobs for whom keeping their kids at home had little financial consequences and working class parents for whom the school hours would be a game changer when it came to going back to work.

Whilst the middle class parents were busy dressing up their decision as the responsible thing to do as a parent, there were a handful of more muted messages from less well off parents quietly reminding them that not everyone has the luxury to take such a mightier than thou attitude towards the government.

If the ending of lockdown wasn’t already a political issue, it is now. Parents are quickly separating themselves into two camps: those who think the government is being reckless and those who worry about the economic impact of carrying on with the status quo. At my son’s school – a rural state primary in Oxfordshire – the former far outweigh the latter. The government needs to act fast if it wants to avoid the situation where the majority of middle class parents decide to keep their children at home.

While I may have rolled my eyes slightly at the overzealous responses of fellow parents, it is the lack of communication coming from the top that has led to this situation. Parents were given no rationale for the decision to send year 1 and year 6 back first. Is it because these children are at a crucial age developmentally and they don’t want them to fall behind? Is it to free up parents of children who are the most high maintenance to go back to work? Or is it because the science points to these age groups being at less risk of spreading the virus? The government’s silence on these issues is causing parents to go into an unnecessary tail spin.

Comparisons have started to emerge in recent days between public attitudes to lockdown and Brexit. There is already a stark divide forming between the haves and the have nots on the issue of lockdown. If the government wants to avoid such division, they need to start communicating. Nobody wants a situation where the well off keep their children at home in the belief that they are shielding their families from the virus while the less well off are made to feel like worse parents because they have little choice but to send their children in to school. A growing body of research exists to show that primary school aged children pose little risk to the spread of the virus. There has not been a single case of a child under 10 passing on coronavirus in contact tracing carried out by the World Health Organisation and a study by the Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health found the evidence ‘consistently demonstrates reduced infection and infectivity of children in the transmission chain’. Although this study was covered in parts of the media, the government has barely breathed a word about it and parents have no idea whether it has informed their decision. As a result, middle class parents are taking matters into their own hands.

A broader confidence issue is also brewing. Many in my own cohort of parents are saying they don’t think the schools will reopen because the infection rate will rise again before June. They think the government is acting prematurely and blindly, especially when contact tracing is still in such early stages of development. While everyone in Whitehall stays mum about the scientific rationale behind the decision on schools, parental discontent is only going to grow. If the government is serious about the return of schools in June then it needs to be honest and upfront with parents about the logic behind their policy.