Commenting on the Module 2 report from the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“This report makes damning findings about the quality of government decision-making during the pandemic. It confirms that the NEU was right all along when it called for earlier lockdowns in the spring of 2020. Lockdown started too late and measures to stem the virus should have been in place well before then.
"The same is true of the school closures commencing in January 2021. The NEU and others tried to persuade the government to introduce tougher measures weeks before but without success. If these lockdowns had started earlier, they would have saved lives, would not have needed to go on for so long, and schools would have been able to fully open up earlier than they did. The experience of other countries tells us that.
“The report does not claim that politicians had an easy task during the pandemic. Teachers, support staff and parents, however, cannot forget the government's inadequate planning, inadequate data and the absence of a coherent strategy. In the next pandemic it is to be hoped that government really does follow the science and plan effectively with a clear strategy in place.”