The Government was warned that more children would die from suicide than from Covid-19 before they ordered the closure of schools.
According to The Telegraph
A joint briefing paper by the Department for Education and the Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours warned in November 2020 that “many more children will die from suicide than Covid-19 this year” as it cited evidence of a rise in self-harm among young people during lockdown.
It noted that Covid-19 related factors including school issues were reported to have contributed to deaths in 12 of the 25 cases of suicide by under-18s identified during the earlier lockdown in England.
The briefing was shared at a Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) meeting in November 2020, attended by senior scientific advisers responsible for briefing ministers, and at least ten senior officials from the Department for Education, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and other departments.
However, despite the findings, ministers decided that schools would be closed for most pupils for the majority of the spring term in 2021. In England in 2020, 161 people aged 10-19 died from suicide, compared to 34 deaths from Covid for the same age group.
The warning is among nine opportunities which the Government missed to avert the damage caused by school closures during the pandemic, according to the first in a series of planned reports on pandemic decision-making by the parents’ campaign group UsForThem.
The group, which called for schools to remain open during the pandemic, is urging the Covid Inquiry to consider its evidence.
UsForThem’s report also noted that previous pandemic plans had been predicated on the basis that mass school closures were to be avoided.
Meanwhile, in February to March 2020, it was documented in SAGE papers that the impact that school closures would have on stemming transmission was likely to be “highly limited”.
Prior to the first school closures in March 2020, a SAGE paper also made clear that if schools closed, they would need to be closed for a lengthy period of time to have any impact. However, this assessment was not communicated to the public, UsForThem found.
Anne Longfield, chair of the Commission on Young Lives and former children’s commissioner for England said: “Despite many warnings and protestations to the contrary, the interests of children were overlooked on an industrial scale by government throughout the covid crisis meaning that schools stayed closed for too long, safeguards for vulnerable children were weakened and the impact of isolation and withdrawal of support for children’s mental health were too often ignored.
“The consequences of these decisions are seen in a generation of children, many of whom are struggling with their education and social skills, sometimes with levels of chronic anxiety so severe that they are unable to attend school or socialise with friends.”
Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP for Devizes in Wiltshire, said: “We urgently need answers as to why the UK deviated from its pandemic plan and closed schools initially without any clear support plan and why later when the damage was known and acknowledged by our most senior scientists and educationalists we closed schools again. It is critical, as a country, that Parliament has both the information and the tools to scrutinise and challenge decisions – it does not appear to have been so in this case. And it’s our children who have suffered.”
