Williamson says 'many mistakes' made over school closures

Former education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson has admitted the Department for Education made “many mistakes” during the Covid-19 pandemic, as he gave evidence to the Covid Inquiry.

Appearing for several hours before the inquiry, which is currently examining the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, Williamson acknowledged failures in planning and decision-making around school closures and exam arrangements, and criticised the centralised control exerted by Downing Street.

Williamson, who served as education secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, expressed deep frustration at the decision to appoint Sir Kevan Collins as education recovery tsar without his knowledge. He complained about being excluded from the process, having to deal with the political fallout from school closures,

The inquiry also heard that Williamson strongly disagreed with Johnson on at least two key moments during the pandemic: the rushed decision to close schools in March 2020, and the January 2021 reversal on school openings, which he said was made for public messaging reasons rather than children’s welfare.

Reflecting on the government’s broader handling of the crisis, Williamson admitted there had been inadequate preparation for school closures, even though the possibility was raised at a SAGE meeting as early as February 2020. “I readily accept that there were many mistakes pre-pandemic,” he said, adding that contingency plans should have been in place “as far back as 2013”.

He also said that the algorithm used to award GCSE and A-level results in 2020 - which caused widespread student uproar - was “quite clearly wrong”, blaming “groupthink” and a failure to understand its impact on individuals.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “This testimony confirms what we said at the time, the chaos and confusion at the heart of government during the pandemic led to bad decision making. Dogmatic thinking at the highest level of government and a refusal to properly engage with the emerging scientific evidence quite clearly caused harm. It is good to see a minister acknowledging that many mistakes were made, although what is far more important is that genuine lessons are now learned so that this does not happen again in the future.”