This is Part 2 of a four-part series on the effects of Covid lockdowns on children and education. Part 1 can be found here. The purposes of this series are to:
- Present the evidence of what has been done to our children — a compendium to remind people of the damage inflicted on a generation and for which no one has been held accountable
- Reject lockdowns as a valid public health strategy
- Reflect on the experiences, words, and feelings of the children and those trying to educate and care for them, and
- Highlight that, in the words of Professor Ian Brighthope, “They knew. They did it anyway”.
The series seeks to achieve this by presenting what ‘they’ said at the time, what ‘we’ said at the time, and what the real-life evidence reveals. Early statements from those in authority and research available at the time are used to show that from the very beginning, the authorities must have been aware that Covid was not deadly and that their policies would cause more harm than good. The articles are based on Government data, the Government’s own words, and peer-reviewed research studies.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s reflections provide insight into the world’s experiences during the so-called Covid pandemic and, indeed, subsequently. His philosophy focused on ethical behaviour, a quality sadly lacking on the part of the political elites.
Dr Nicholas Tate is a former Chief Executive of both the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Headmaster of Winchester College, Director of the International School of Geneva, and an advisor to governments. In his commentary on Kant, he argued that:
One of the main objectives of education is to foster a national identity … something that all must share for the sake of coherence between the state and society … if a sense of civic responsibility in relation to the functioning at national level of nation states is lacking — and this requires a sense of national identity-nation states run the risk, behind a democratic facade, of turning into oligarchies run by small political elites devoted to the perpetuation of their own power.
Please keep his commentary in mind as you read this article.
Introduction
“Why are you still talking about lockdowns, Hugh? It’s in the past. It’s over”. Several such remarks greeted me at the start of this latest series. Margaret Anna Alice, in her companion piece to ‘Mistakes Were Not Made’, entitled ‘Eulogy for the Covid Kapos’, here read by Dr Ahmad Malik, provided one answer: “It will never end without acknowledgement. It will never end without accountability. It will never end without remorse. It will never end without justice”.
Former pharmaceutical industry executive Sasha Latypova provided another answer: it will last for as long as the declaration of a pandemic emergency is in place. The reason for her answer is set out below in this December 2024 news release from the US Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), which states, in part:
US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra today signed the 12th amendment to the declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act (PREP) Act for COVID-19 countermeasures, a step that provides liability immunity through December 31, 2029.
The declaration provides immunity, except for willful misconduct, for certain claims, including loss caused by or related to the administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats, or conditions, according to information from the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), which is part of HHS.
The immunity applies to situations deemed by the HHS secretary as a present or credible risk of a future public health emergency. It also applies to groups or individuals involved in development, production, testing, distribution, and administration of countermeasures.
The PREP Act was enacted in 2005 to help protect pharmaceutical companies from financial risk in the event of a declared public health emergency [emphasis added].
This covers all the products and protocols that were used during the so-called pandemic, such as masks, PCR tests, and injections. It is worth noting that no evidence is required to declare a pandemic emergency in the US — only the opinion of the Secretary of State — mirroring the power assigned to the Secretary-General of the World Health Organization.
Professor Bhattacharya commented: “If the current configuration of power, public health and politics stands, with another pandemic, we are going to lock down again, guaranteed”. As we know, this configuration has changed in the US now that Professor Bhattacharya is Director of the US National Institutes of Health, but it has not changed in Europe, where many leaders, including the UK Prime Minister, have signed an international pandemic treaty that gives the World Health Organization (WHO) the power to recommend lockdowns.
There are many other reasons to consider caring about the effects of the lockdowns. For example, as Professor John Ioannidis said:
Decisions were putting our children as a shield to protect us — the whole debate was for safeguarding adults from the dangerous children, creating a sense in children that they are dangerous. We did the worst thing that one can do. We destroyed our kids — and we can do it again.
Most worryingly, perhaps, as Lionel Shriver reported:
Most ordinary people still believe that lockdowns, and the accompanying bramble of insensible, ever-changing and medically illiterate Covid restrictions, saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the UK.
Renowned UK cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora said in August 2023:
A generation of children has been failed by a philosophy that enabled and even encouraged an industrial level of suffering. For what? A virus that posed them almost no threat, indeed no more danger than they faced on a day-to-day basis in everyday pre-Covid life.
Professor Martin Kuldorf pointed out in 2024:
We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the working class and the poor around the world will all suffer. Almost everyone now realises that school closures and other lockdowns were a colossal mistake.
Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that nearly half of parents reported that their children’s social and emotional skills had worsened. Yet no government figure has admitted that school closures were a colossal mistake nor accepted responsibility for the catastrophic mistakes that enabled an industrial level of suffering or the catastrophic impact on children’s social and emotional skills.
Consequently, it is important to record what happened as a testimony. As Professor Heneghan said:
We believe that we must record as much as possible of what went on for posterity, hoping that the catastrophic mistakes are not repeated in the future. In this way, the suffering will not have been in vain. The effects of lockdown, now becoming clearer by the day, should never be forgotten.
They Knew
The evidence presented here adds to the material in Part 1 of this series.
As early as 19 March 2020, according to the UK Government, Covid was no longer considered to be a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) in the UK. Its website stated:
In the UK, a high-consequence infectious disease (HCID) is defined according to the following criteria:
- acute infectious disease
- typically has a high case-fatality rate
- may not have effective prophylaxis or treatment
- often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly
- ability to spread in the community and within healthcare settings
- requires an enhanced individual, population and system response to ensure it is managed effectively, efficiently and safely
Professor Denis Rancourt noted that before 11 March 2020, no excess deaths occurred anywhere in the world, and that many countries and regions showed no excess mortality at all in 2020.
The following was noted in a 2022 report by Dr Ros Jones and Dr Zenobia Storah and published through the Health ethics Advocacy and Research Team (HeART):
An internal government briefing in November 2020, outlined the increasing concern and evidence of harms caused by school closures during the first UK lockdown (March-July 2020). It listed multiple harms including risk to educational outcomes (especially for the most disadvantaged children), exacerbation of attainment gaps and other inequalities, impediment to timely identification of learning needs, impairment to the mental and physical health of children and young people, and to their cognitive, social and emotional development. The report highlighted additional risks to vulnerable children due to reduced access to essential services and questioned the effects of extended periods of remote learning on educational outcomes.
Despite this readily available data, schools closed on 20 March 2020, and for most pupils, schools did not reopen until September 2020. Schools closed again at Christmas and did not reopen until 12 April 2021 in Northern Ireland. And, sadly, when schools reopened, they were instructed to implement a test-and-trace system, leading to many more lost days of education for the nation’s children. The scheme required healthy children to undergo routine Covid testing, and required contacts of children who tested positive to isolate at home. By July 2021, almost a quarter of England’s pupils (1.7 million children) were absent from school, for Covid-related and non-Covid-related reasons, despite Public Health England acknowledging in January 2021 that the pandemic had had significant impacts on mental health and education, and that schools play only a small part in viral transmission.
Then, at a meeting of the Special Committee of the European Commission held on 11 October 2022 to discuss the management of the so-called pandemic, a Pfizer executive confirmed that the vaccine had never been tested for its ability to prevent the transmission of Covid before being put on the market. As US Secretary of State for Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr said, “Pfizer … knew the vaccine would kill people, and they did it anyway”. Data emerging since the introduction of the vaccine indicate that it is, in fact, unable to do so, thereby exposing the duplicity of coercing young people to get vaccinated and refuting the claim that the Covid digital passport, available to those who have been vaccinated, provides any guarantee of protection, and which was used to deny young people access to social interaction, which was so crucial to their mental health.
The concept of asymptomatic transmission, which underpinned the practice of isolation and quarantining, did so much damage. Dr Clare Craig neatly dispatched the concept:
The concept of asymptomatic transmission formed the foundation for the belief that lockdown was necessary and might work, and for mask wearing and amplified the atmosphere of fear with the idea that anyone could be a threat. Our ability to test and detect minute, irrelevant quantities of virus has created an utterly distorted view of reality. The myth that apparently healthy people are a potential threat to others needs to be quashed for good so that people can stop treating each other primarily as potential vectors of disease.
The revelation by the Pfizer executive, the rebuttal of the concept of ‘asymptomatic transmission’, and the removal of Covid as an HCID surely removed all justification for isolating, quarantining, and vaccinating children, and closing schools.
Deception — Their Own Data Played Back
The policy actions, such as school closures, the isolation of schoolchildren, and masking, were allegedly carried out due to the dangers to children and to the public. These claims were examined in this article.
Data from official sources in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada, the US, Ireland, and Iceland showed that no healthy child died of Covid during 2020; indeed, a 2022 analysis of the FDA’s data showed that the risk of any child dying of Covid is 0.000015%. Children had a 99.9987% chance of surviving Covid, according to a study by Professor John Ioannidis. In fact, as Dr Paul Alexander reported, “There had been no deaths of healthy children in the US, nor globally”.
The article features data from a painstaking dissection of the Northern Ireland data, based entirely on Freedom of Information responses to the inestimable Kathy Gray and Jonathan Weissman. A clear methodology is set out for those wishing to pursue similar government-held information. The data reveals that the number of deaths from Covid (deaths in which Covid is the only cause mentioned on the death certificate) in the period March 2020 to September 2023 was 273 (of whom 203 were over 75). They died at a rate of around 6-7 per month, the same rate as they would have died from flu.
As mentioned above, despite this readily available data, schools closed on 20 March 2020 and, for most pupils, did not reopen until September 2020. Schools closed again at Christmas and did not reopen until 12 April 2021.
Kathy Gray, working with Professors Martin Neill and Norman Fenton, provided the updated Northern Ireland data through Freedom of Information request DOF/2025-0405. It reveals that, in the period March 2020 to March 2025, 280 people died of Covid. Indeed, Robin Swann, the Northern Ireland Health Minister, stated that his own internal report predicted 275 deaths, not “deaths of biblical proportions”, which is what he said on television when locking down and closing schools.
Dr David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a background in modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. He coordinated malaria diagnostics strategy at the World Health Organisation. He stated at a Davos in the Desert conference that Covid mortality is rare in young and middle-aged people, and this was known in early 2020. Dr Bell wrote the following to me in an email referencing a paper published by The Lancet Infectious Diseases in March 2020. Professor Neil Ferguson was an author of this paper.
Essentially, it shows that by February 2020 (i.e., before lockdowns), we knew that Covid was rarely severe in people under 60 years of age, so there was no reason to isolate healthy working-age people or children at all. The paper is by the Imperial College group, who did the modelling that drove lockdowns. They published this, but apparently ignored it in their own modelling.
It absolutely shows that every time anyone in government or academia said, ‘we are all in this together,’ they were either grossly ignorant or lying, from at least February 2020. The narrative that we did not know enough then is entirely false.
The evidence that ‘they’ knew keeps mounting. In October 2023, the UK Health Security Agency released a review which concluded that, “There is a lack of strong evidence on the effectiveness of NPIs to reduce Covid transmission”. These measures included lockdowns, the ‘rule of six’, testing, isolation, face coverings, border restrictions, and more.
Children weren’t even considered. As The Spectator reported, the Covid inquiry heard from Professor Neil Ferguson, the architect of many lockdown models, that the side effects of lockdowns, such as damage to education, were not considered “because the government didn’t ask about them [emphasis added]”. Helen MacNamara, former Deputy Cabinet Secretary, spelt it out: “There wasn’t enough thinking about the overall experience of children who might not have quite the same privileges as the people who are in rooms in Whitehall making decisions”.
So, children were not at risk, they were not taking a ‘virus’ home, and the drive to isolate/quarantine until they were vaccinated so as ‘not to kill Granny’ was all false and known by the authorities to be false. The all-encompassing phrase “mistakes were not made” summarises the theme of earlier articles and this one, and features Margaret Anna Alice’s poem entitled ‘An Anthem for Justice’, read emotionally by Dr Tess Lawrie of the World Council for Health.
Professor Chris Whitty, then the Chief Medical Officer in England, said in February 2021, “If you keep children out of school, every single one of the children you keep out of school is disadvantaged”. I am struck by the hypocrisy of this statement. In April 2020, I began giving presentations to a major education board here in Northern Ireland, opposing school closures, mask wearing, and the use of the PCR test as a means by which children were being forced to isolate, as well as being denied education and much-needed socialisation. The following proposal is typical of my fruitless campaign:
I propose that we:
- Hold the Department of Health to account by insisting they furnish us with the PCR cycle frequency.
- Ask the Department of Education (DE) for their risk assessment regarding children wearing masks for 6–7 hours per day.
- Ask when they intend to review their effect in terms of reducing cases and harms to education and health.
It saddened me at the time (and still does) that a Board styling itself as evidence-based would not consider the detailed evidence regarding the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for children, the futility and harms associated with mask wearing, the levels of anxiety, stress, and abuse being experienced by our children, the damage caused by the PCR testing, and the pointlessness and untested nature of the so-called vaccines. I called for an end to mask wearing, isolation, testing, school closures and vaccinations on school premises, sadly to no avail.
At this lonely time, I was strengthened by the solid support of a small group of people, many of whom wrote evidence-based articles in support of my presentations. This is the introduction to an extensive evidence-based communication from one of the group, Mrs Patricia McGuigan:
Mr McCarthy represented my very real concerns about school children entrusted to your care. In particular, I am distressed by your failure to support the demands made to the Department of Education and the Department of Health that masks be made voluntary, and for the cycle threshold used on PCR tests. We are appalled and frightened by the way our vulnerable children are being abused, and we demand that you do real risk assessments of mask-wearing, such as the measurement of oxygen levels behind the mask.
At the time, I was also invited to write a series of articles for one of Northern Ireland’s major newspapers, Belfast’s News Letter, which was running a campaign questioning the continued closure of schools. An excerpt from my article published in June 2020 is below:
Not since the strikes of the early 1970s have our schools been closed.
Education is either important or it isn’t.
Numeracy and literacy will not have stayed level during this time; they will have fallen.
Reading scores, for example, affect exam results, and from there, access to higher education and employment.
Does anyone seriously believe that children who can’t or won’t work at home at the best of times will do so now?
Naturally, parents, children, and staff are fearful of a return to school, so let us look at what the scientists say.
Either it is safe to go to school or it isn’t.
According to the Department of Health Northern Ireland Dashboard, there has been only one COVID-19 death in NI of a person under 40.
There is a one in a million chance of dying from COVID-19 if you are under 30, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Indeed, Professor Karol Sikora, formerly Director of Services at the World Health Organisation said with regard to opening primary schools and nurseries, ‘Opening schools is absolutely vital … the people who are suffering most are the most disadvantaged … evidence that young children spread is almost zero’. He goes on to say, ‘why wait until September?’
Professor John Lee, Professor of Clinical Pathology at Hull University, sums it up thus: ‘The majority of cases are asymptomatic, the most common symptoms are not fever, cough, headaches, and respiratory symptoms; they are no symptoms at all. Somewhere around 99.5% of those who catch the disease will recover’.
The ‘safety’ measures — masks, screens, PPE, etc. — create the illusion of safety while increasing fear and anxiety, which will significantly rise if children do not return to school soon.
Mental health issues are on the increase in schools as it is; there aren’t enough resources at the moment, and there is a crisis looming when the children return.
Surely it is up to the UK and Irish Governments (not the principals) to assuage the fears of the public first, and then people will return willingly to a proper learning environment.
A series of published articles followed regarding the dangers and lack of efficacy for masks (October 2020), the isolation of children (November 2020), the harms being caused by school closures (January 2021 and February 2021), and questioning why we were vaccinating children (October 2021). In total, I published eleven articles under the overarching title of ‘What Are We Doing To Our Children?’
There is even more updated evidence.
On 8 February 2024, The Times Educational Supplement (TES) reported a “huge rise in pupil mental health emergencies”. The article reports that headteachers were warning that schools are being left to deal with a “tsunami” of pressures affecting pupil wellbeing following the so-called pandemic.
The Children’s Commissioner reported to Parliament that 1.5 million children were awaiting appointments for mental health-related issues such as disabling tic disorders, self-harming behaviours, and eating disorders.
In addition, data analysed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists showed “a 53 per cent rise in referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) crisis teams in England”.
Meanwhile, in 2022, the US saw a 50 per cent increase in admissions to hospitals with attempted suicides.
Callous Disregard for Society, But No One Is Responsible. Why Is That?
I was also seeking answers from the Chief Medical Officer, the Department of Health, and the Department of Education. This article continues evidence of a lack of democratic accountability, specifically the refusal to answer questions or respond to valid concerns. Lord Sumption, former Lord Chief Justice, succinctly articulated his fears about democracy:
The British public has not yet begun to understand the seriousness of what is happening in our country; many, if not most, of them don’t care or won’t until it’s too late. They instinctively feel that the ends justify the means, the motto of every totalitarian regime that has ever existed.
It centred on a lengthy exchange I had with our Chief Medical Officer from February 2022 to January 2023, in which I asked him a series of questions asking him to explain the rationale behind his decision-making for the continued:
- Restrictions on children attending school
- Mask policy for school children
- Use of PCR tests
- Pressure on children who have a 99.9987% (the number at the time) survival chance and who do not ‘transmit the virus’ to be vaccinated
- Adverse effects caused by vaccinating children.
I asked him:
- If he was monitoring the adverse effects of vaccines
- If he would now concur that children have little capacity to transmit the virus in the light of evidence from the PHE, which showed that reopening of schools had not been associated with significant increases in community transmission
- Based on that evidence, would he further agree that closing schools was a mistake, and therefore, would not recommend that course of action again
- How the US’ VAERS and the UK’s Yellow Card systems were informing his decision-making, and whether citizens’ rights regarding informed consent, as set out on the NHS website, were readily and clearly available at vaccination centres and surgeries.
I included some compelling research on the harms likely to be caused by the policies and provided Professor Ioannidis’ data, which shows that persons aged 0-19 have a 0.0003% risk of death from Covid, and asked him if he disagreed with the world’s leading epidemiologist and other associated data, much of it from government sources, to outline where he believes Ioannidis and the government data are incorrect.
Finally, I asked him why no risk-benefit analysis was carried out.
At the same time, I had been engaging in a lengthy exchange with the Public Health Authority on the twin themes of democratic accountability and scientific evidence. This is a brief excerpt from the communication in December 2021.
The Executive claims it is following the advice of the PHA, while the PHA asserts that these are the agreed policies of the Executive. The point of my email was to get some accountability and obtain answers, and these have not been forthcoming. This has been, sadly, all too typical of government agencies that pass the ball around. Your actions/policies re masks, lockdowns, PCR tests, vaccinations, and vaccine passports are wholly unsupported by scientific data. You have been advising the government for two years. Eighty per cent of the country is vaccinated and masked, but cases are rising. So, after two years of a policy, at what point does someone stop and think? And say, Maybe this isn’t working?
It was clear the authorities knew that masks, a heinous affront to us and our children, school closures, and lockdowns did not work.
I was also corresponding with the Department of Health and the Health Minister, Robin Swann, regarding these issues.
This is a short excerpt from my email of 17 August 2020:
I have previously written to you about my concerns regarding the removal of accountable democracy. The Executive has introduced the most draconian measures in our history.
Yet I can get no response or engagement from the political parties we elected. I keep hearing the mantra that we are “following the science”. Could you please inform me about the scientific basis for mask use? As you are aware, the predominant scientific view, most recently presented by Professor Heneghan, is that there is no scientific evidence to support the value of wearing masks.
Yet, despite Professor Heneghan telling the Northern Ireland Executive on 10 August 2020 that mandatory face coverings in Northern Ireland were a wrong policy, the Executive introduced a patchwork of policies, resulting in some children wearing masks for up to eight hours per day.
The following articles provide a snapshot of how we treated our children in Northern Ireland and serve as a reminder of what they endured.
- August 2020: “Face coverings are set to be ‘strongly encouraged’ in NI schools if social distancing is not possible”. I leave the possibility — and even the desirability — of social distancing in a school to the reader.
- August 2020: “NI pupils to wear face coverings in corridors … and other communal areas”.
- August 2020: “Coronavirus: Masks now mandatory for secondary pupils in Scotland and Northern Ireland”.
- August 2020: “Singing and parents banned as schools reopen in Northern Ireland”.
- August 2021: “Schools in Northern Ireland can continue to teach some children in class bubbles when the new term begins”.
- March 2022: “Masks no longer required in NI classrooms”.
All this charade was happening when the authorities must have been aware that none of it was necessary. In all, I was to write 657 emails to the authorities pointing this out. I still find it incomprehensible that such a large part of society was taken in and/or acquiesced to the removal of our democratic freedoms.
Incredible How Society Was Fooled
This article revisits evidence that highlights that ‘they’ knew, offers a wide-ranging review of the damage, and includes comments from the many experts whose opinions the authorities ignored. Professor Brighthope is even more scathing in his article entitled ‘A Country Fooled — The Dark Side of Albanese’s Failed Australian Government’.
I still find it shocking that despite the evidence of their own eyes, so many people believed and continue to believe that Covid was deadly, and that lockdowns and masking were and are an appropriate and successful public health response as expressed to me by my local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) on 14 October 2025 after I had sent him the US Senate Covid subcommittee summary and the Northern Ireland data set out above:
Most governments around the world responded to threat of the Covid 19 pandemic with lockdowns and other interventions such as masks. The intention was to limit the transmission of the virus, to prevent health systems from becoming overwhelmed and to buy time to allow vaccines to be developed. There is plenty of evidence that they worked to these ends.
His response fully explains why the fallacy of lockdowns as a valid public health response must be exposed so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated and children’s needs are not ignored. “Children’s needs were ignored by the government during the pandemic”, according to a 2023 Save the Children report published three and a half years too late, some might think.
This headline introducing a 2024 report by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services is also typical: ‘The Devastating Impact Covid and Austerity Had on Children in England’. It presents a damning indictment of the policymakers. The “devastating impact” is briefly summarised below:
- The UK’s children were plagued by preventable poor health, from obesity to tooth decay to mental illness.
- Record numbers of young people were seeking help for mental health issues. The Children’s Commissioner reported to Parliament in 2024 that 1.5 million children were awaiting appointments for mental health-related issues.
- In 2023, about 4.2 million children were in relative poverty in the UK. The number of young people experiencing destitution or extreme poverty — meaning their families cannot afford to clothe them, clean them, or keep them warm — had tripled over the past three years.
- There were accounts in 2023 of so-called ‘Covid babies’ who reached school age still wearing nappies and unable to speak properly.
And as set out in Part 1, lockdowns have given us a ‘truancy epidemic’ with warnings that pupils from mostly underprivileged backgrounds had lost the habit of attending school and that their parents no longer feel an obligation to force their children to attend. In addition, lockdowns have significantly worsened behaviour, with record high numbers of pupils being suspended due to persistent bad behaviour, according to the Department of Education. The result was that by spring 2023, approximately 140,000 children had missed more than half of the school days they were expected to attend.
Of course, disruptive behaviour and absence from school due to suspension harm attainment. The decision to close schools during lockdown has had devastating effects on student attainment. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, which compare educational attainment among 15-year-olds worldwide, have registered a sharp decline in this country. This decline wiped out years of gradual improvement and showed that UK children achieved their lowest scores in maths and science.
Research by the Children’s Commissioner, published in November 2023, finds that only 5 per cent of these ‘severely absent’ kids go on to achieve five GCSEs. For year 10 and year 11 pupils who are persistently absent, just over a third achieve the minimum of five GCSEs. For children who are rarely absent, the figure is 78 per cent.
The National Association of Primary Education highlighted an Ofsted report published in October 2024. As The Guardian summarised:
School starters born during pandemic lack communication skills … Primary schools are having to teach infants how to communicate, as they struggle to make friends or cope with lessons because of speech and language difficulties. The research by Ofsted inspectors found that the Covid pandemic is still having an impact on children’s behaviour and social skills.
An article entitled ‘The Impact on School Closures on School Attendance’ provided further extensive evidence of the damage done to educational and developmental outcomes. It used 2021–2022 data and UK Government sources. The Government appears to have acknowledged the impact of its Covid policies on schools by announcing extra help for schools with low behaviour and attendance, although there was no admission of culpability.
A broader impact has been revealed; one that may have far-reaching consequences for our children and society. Last year, one in 10 teachers, or 41,200, left the teaching profession, with 80% citing bad behaviour by pupils as a significant reason. Additionally, only 57% of teachers trained 10 years ago are still in the profession, according to the Department of Education. IOSH, the magazine of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, provided a September 2025 detailed analysis of the types of behaviour in an article called ‘Teacher Burnout and Abuse in UK Schools’ under the subheading ‘Breaking Point’.
The headings in this article have told the story, as this last one does.
They Misled the Country
This article, the title of which neatly summarises the series, highlights that, despite the catastrophic failures of these policies, their wholly unnecessary nature, the devastating damage to our children and society, and the huge waste of public money, no one has been held accountable. It is an attempt to hold ‘them’ accountable, at least in the court of public opinion, for the harms ‘they’ have caused, by using data and statements from the authorities themselves, along with the words and research of eminent professors.
The series has also highlighted the erosion of democratic rights accurately articulated by Dr Tate’s commentary on Kant’s philosophy: we are witnessing “the facade of democracy behind which nations run the risk of turning into oligarchies run by political elites devoted to the perpetuation of their own power”.
As the philosopher Rousseau opined: “If you ever substitute in his mind authority for reason, he will no longer reason. He will be nothing more than a plaything of others’ opinions”.
Margaret Anna Alice phrased it thus: “A philanthropath wants you submissive, wants you cowardly, wants you hopeless. He doesn’t want you to think, to question, to research, to speak, to act, to say no, to see what they are doing, to rise up, prosecute and convict”.
This has been our experience, hasn’t it?
Further comprehensive reviews of the harms to children are also contained in this excellent article by Dr Ros Jones and Dr Zenobia Storah, and also set out here and here in two of my previous articles published by UK Column.