Sir Gavin Williamson has admitted that many mistakes were made in the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic in schools.

Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry today, the former education secretary acknowledged there were problems caused by a lack of planning and the way GCSEs and A levels were graded in 2020.

He also said that former prime minister Boris Johnson’s announcement in May 2020 that pupils would be returning to school before the end of the summer undermined the system and gave people false hope.

Sir Gavin also reiterated his view that the closure of schools in the third national lockdown in January 2021 was not required and had been “a panic decision”.

Sir Gavin, who was education secretary at the onset of the Covid pandemic until September 2021, was questioned by Clair Dobbin KC about why the department had not carried out more planning for the closure of schools at the beginning of the pandemic.

Sir Gavin: ‘We should have had a clear plan’

Last week Sir Jon Coles, the CEO of the largest multi-academy trust in the country, had warned the inquiry that the DfE had shown an “extraordinary dereliction of duty” in not planning for school closures.

In a statement to the inquiry given in 2023, Sir Gavin said he had not asked DfE officials to prepare an assessment on the impact of school closures in early 2020, as the advice at the time “was not recommending closures” and Number 10 had not commissioned it.

Speaking today, Sir Gavin said: “ As we look back at it now, we should have had different actions in place in order to be better prepared for it.  

“I readily accept that there were many mistakes that were made, both pre-pandemic and in those early stages of the pandemic.

“I think we should have done it very differently…I think we should have, pre-2020, we should have had a clear plan with a range of scenarios.”

He also said he was sorry the DfE had not been sharp enough in its response.

“The weight wasn’t put on to that emerging scientific evidence that did clearly prove to be right,” he said.

U-turn on school reopenings was ‘damaging’

In February 2020, various documents that raised the potential impact of school closures were put to the former education secretary by the expert Sage group.

But Sir Gavin said that at that time, the government was not looking at closing schools, adding: “Indeed, the government policy at the time wasn’t really looking at closing anything.”

He told the session that, when he attended the Association of School and College Leaders conference in March, he went with a “key message” cleared by Downing Street that schools would be staying open.

However, a national lockdown was to be announced just days later as the crisis continued to take hold.

In his written evidence, Sir Gavin described a “discombobulating 24-hour sea change” from keeping schools open on 16 March to talking about closing them on 17 March, before an announcement to shut them was made the following day.

Sir Gavin also criticised former prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision in May 2020 to announce a phased return to schools as “damaging” to schools, children and families.

He said: “I think it was 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 added that he felt it was giving people “a false sense of hope and belief” and that a return was not going to be possible without the government changing social distancing rules in place at that time.

DfE had not understood ‘unfairness’ of grading algorithm

Sir Gavin was also questioned on the exam grading used in summer 2020 when Ofqual produced a model to give grades to students after exams were cancelled.

Last week, Sir Jon Coles said he had told Sir Gavin that it was not possible to “accurately model” the grades and that they would be introducing “serious unfairness” for hundreds of thousands of young people.

He added: “What Gavin Williamson actually said to me is, ‘Well, I think you might be right, Jon, but I think it’s too late now to do anything about it’.”

Sir Gavin told the inquiry today that he did not recall saying this. However, he said that there had been too much “groupthink” across the UK on using a standardised system for arriving at grades, rather than using teachers’ predicted grades.

He added: “I don’t think people had understood and truly comprehended the unfairness [the grading model] would kick out and the scale it would do it at.”

The inquiry continues.

You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on iOS and on Android