School’s out: the true cost of classroom closures

It’s Monday at 9 a.m. and secondary schools in England have just re-opened their gates to students in Years 10 and 12. I have been looking forward to this moment for 13 long weeks, since that frightening afternoon in March when my colleagues and I gathered around a computer in the staff room and saw a healthier-looking Boris Johnson declare he was shutting schools.

But today I’m not at the comprehensive in Hackney where I teach economics welcoming back my students with a rousing lesson on the financial devastation caused by the crisis. I’m surplus to requirements and am still marooned at home. What ‘re-opening’ means is that a mere quarter of Year 10 — about 40 students — have turned up to school, where they will have a short day and learn mainly maths, English and science.

My school, like every other in the land, has followed government orders and done a gold-plated risk assessment to ensure these students will be safe. It has laid out rules covering the movement of every teenager for every second of the truncated school day. With barely 40 of them in at any given time, occupying a space built for 750, the risk of anyone picking up the virus must be smaller than the risk of falling downstairs and cracking their heads on the tiled floor below. It must be far lower than the risk of acquiring Covid-19 at Tesco or Primark; and in a different league of magnitude to the risk of having picked it up last weekend on nearby London Fields, where the crowds of picnickers, revellers and drinkers reminded me of Glastonbury.

While the health danger to these few students of returning to school is minuscule, the risk to the others of staying at home in their bedrooms, where they have been incarcerated for three months on Google Classroom or similar, is monumental.