Department ‘not prepared’ for school closures

The former permanent secretary of the Northern Ireland Department of Education has said it was not “psychologically or practically prepared” for swathes of the school system closing down in March 2020.

Derek Baker was Permanent Secretary of the Department of Education from 2017 to November 2020.

He gave evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on Wednesday. This part of the inquiry is looking at how the pandemic impacted children and young people.

The inquiry was shown a draft Department of Education document containing a contingency plan for handling human influenza dated 2017.

Mr Baker questioned the validity of the document, and said after its original publication in 2010, the guidance remained at the revision stage up to, and after March 2020.

Mr Baker told the inquiry he was “unsure” the education department had undertaken internal planning in the event of a pandemic.

“When covid struck in March 2020, I was not aware of the existence of this guidance,” he said.

Leah Treanor, counsel to the inquiry, asked Mr Baker how this could be, as the advice would have been produced by department officials, of which he was one.

Mr Baker said it could simply be explained by loss of corporate memory, and the existence of the guidance was not brought to this attention upon taking up office in 2017, nor during the period.

Mr Baker disagreed that the document had “accurately forecast” the circumstances the department faced in 2020.

“The set of circumstances we faced could not have been anticipated. Flu guidance was more likely to be focusing on individual schools having to close,” he said.

“The whole scale closure of the education system was wholly unprecedented, unforeseen and unpredicted by anyone.”

Recalling minutes of departmental meetings, Mr Baker said Covid-19 formed part of the agenda, but was discussed in the context of its effects on the health service.

“Nobody was gearing up for closures in other aspects of society, including hospitality, tourism, business, public transport and education,” he said.

Mr Baker said he would not have expected schools in Northern Ireland to have contingency plans in place for the long term closure of the education system prior to March 2020.

“The closure of schools was simply a bad thing, there was nothing positive about it, and the best that we were in was mitigation of these very difficult circumstances,” he said.

“Remote teaching and learning and the closure of schools was no substitute in any way for classroom-based learning. It was always going to be second best.”