Schools closed 'with heaviest of hearts' says Gove

PA Media

The government closed schools with "the heaviest of hearts" Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove has said, as he confirmed this year's GCSE and A-level exams have been cancelled.

The government is in talks with exam regulator Ofqual about alternative assessments, he said.

It wants to ensure exams are as "fair as possible", Mr Gove added.

He said the decision was made after the UK's chief medical officers recommended a move to Covid threat level five.

The step to close schools was taken "very, very reluctantly" because the children who suffer most are those from disadvantaged backgrounds who have less access to online learning, Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

But he said the "clear advice" to move to the highest level of Covid alert - level 5 - came only yesterday, after some primary schools had already returned from the Christmas break.

After hearing Bohunt School head teacher Neil Strowger saying he was "bitterly disappointed and quite upset" for students, Mr Gove - whose daughter is in her A-level year and whose son in studying GCSEs - said he shared the concerns.

Analysis: 'The only lever left to pull'

By Hannah Richardson, BBC News education reporter

It was the step the government said it would never take - closing schools again in England to all but a small number of children.

Again and again we were told education was the priority and schools would remain fully open.

The Department for Education stood firm against a crescendo of calls for a circuit-breaker during the October half-term, then against an early holiday in December.

Self-isolating teachers were going to extraordinary lengths to teach remotely from home, while heads created one-way systems, sanitiser stations and installed temperature scanners in school receptions.

But the attendance figures were showing week after week how the virus was impacting on pupils' ability to show up.

For a while, mass testing of pupils seemed to be the answer, but the short time available for head teachers to set this up made it a non-starter.

In the end it was the pressure on the NHS, caused by the new, more contagious variant of coronavirus, which sounded the closing bell for schools.

To shut them was the only lever government had left to pull to try to turn the tanker as a new tide of Covid cases began sweeping the nation.

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January 05, 2021 at 10:44PM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55544336