As the UK Covid-19 Inquiry entered its eighth module this week, the spotlight turned to the profound impact of the pandemic on children and young people—a subject that has stirred strong emotions and pointed criticisms from former officials and education leaders alike. On October 14, 2025, Sir Gavin Williamson, who served as education secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, took the stand to reflect on the government’s pandemic strategy for schools, offering a rare blend of candid regret, pointed blame, and calls for lessons to be learned.
Williamson’s testimony, reported by multiple outlets including BBC and The Independent, painted a picture of a government struggling to balance public health imperatives with the needs of children and their families. "The key thrust of government policy was to keep schools open," Williamson explained, describing how his department lacked the autonomy to prepare for closures without explicit approval from Downing Street. The former secretary admitted, "I readily accept that there were many mistakes that were made, both pre-pandemic and in those early stages of the pandemic." He added, "The weight wasn’t put on to that emerging scientific evidence that did clearly prove to be right."
Williamson’s regret was palpable, particularly regarding the timing of school closures. The government paper outlining the closure policy was, according to Williamson, commissioned and drafted just the night before then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the first nationwide school shutdown on March 18, 2020. This last-minute scramble, he said, was emblematic of a broader lack of preparedness: "I think we should have done it very differently. I think we should have, pre-2020, had a clear plan with a range of scenarios."
In a written statement to the inquiry, Williamson described a "discombobulating 24-hour sea change" from keeping schools open on March 16 to discussing closures on March 17, and then announcing the shutdown on March 18. This rapid pivot, he argued, left little time for schools to prepare, with the Department for Education (DfE) caught between Number 10’s insistence on keeping schools open and the mounting scientific evidence suggesting closures were inevitable.
Williamson was especially critical of Boris Johnson’s decision in May 2020 to announce a phased return to schools—a move he described as "damaging for schools, and I think it was damaging for children and parents, because actually what parents heard was the prime minister saying all your kids are going to be able to go back to primary school before summer." He elaborated, "It was giving people a false sense of hope and belief." According to Williamson, the social distancing rules in place at the time made such a return not only impractical but potentially illegal: "There was no physical way we could do it [reopen schools completely] without asking every school to basically break the law."
When schools did reopen in September 2020, a so-called "fallback" plan for another possible lockdown was kept hidden from schools. The rationale, as revealed in government papers and confirmed by Williamson, was to avoid giving schools an "excuse not to open in September." This decision, like many others, highlighted the tension between transparency and government control during the crisis.
The controversy did not end with school closures and reopenings. The summer 2020 exam grading debacle—where a model was used to calculate students’ grades after exams were canceled—drew particular ire. Williamson did not mince words: "The model used to calculate students' grades in the summer of 2020 was quite clearly wrong, and the department always understood that there were some students who wouldn't get the grades they deserve." The fallout from this algorithmic misstep was widely felt, with students, parents, and teachers expressing outrage at what was perceived as an unfair and opaque process.
Throughout his testimony, Williamson repeatedly accepted responsibility for the department’s shortcomings. "I’m sorry for, because I readily accept that I was secretary of state and it was my responsibility," he stated, acknowledging that the DfE’s response was not "sharp enough." He also pushed back against the accusation—leveled by academy trust leader Sir Jon Coles—that the department’s failure to plan for closures in early March 2020 was an "extraordinary dereliction of duty." Williamson countered that the DfE had been given a "clear indication that we were to keep schools open," and that key decisions were made by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office, not by individual departments.
Williamson’s criticisms extended to the government’s overall pandemic response, arguing that "the significance of the pandemic should have been understood much better" across Whitehall. He lamented that the government did not "bite the bullet and make those plans in a way that would have helped later on." When asked directly if he believed Boris Johnson had prioritized the NHS over children during the January 2021 school closures, Williamson responded, "He has to prioritize one set of needs, and I think he chose the NHS over children."
The inquiry’s proceedings have also included testimony from headteachers and education leaders who described making their own contingency plans for remote learning weeks before any government directive. One headteacher recounted driving to a motorway service station to learn how to use Google Classroom, underscoring the improvisational nature of the early response. Dan Paskins of Save the Children was blunt in his assessment: "The shocking failure to properly plan or to assess the impact of decisions made during the pandemic on children has left a generation paying a heavy price. Devastating mistakes were made, and we cannot accept them being repeated. Children’s rights must never again be an afterthought in a national crisis."
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the school leaders’ union NAHT, echoed the sentiment, stating it was good to see acknowledgment of mistakes but emphasizing the importance of ensuring such errors are not repeated. Meanwhile, a government spokesperson reiterated the official line: "We know there will be lessons to be learnt from the pandemic and we are committed to learning from the Covid Inquiry’s findings which will play a key role in informing the Government’s planning and preparations for the future."
As the inquiry continues, the testimony of Sir Gavin Williamson and others has laid bare the complexity, confusion, and—at times—chaos that defined the government’s approach to education during the pandemic. The hope among many is that the hard lessons learned will shape a more resilient and child-centered response in any future crisis.
