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Was Boris Johnson’s failure to devise a proper plan for education during the Covid-19 pandemic the “extraordinary dereliction of duty” that Sir Jon Coles said it was?
From the evidence he gave to the Covid-19 Inquiry yesterday (October 21, 2025), the answer is yes – but not all responsibility can be laid at his door.
Sir Jon Coles is the chief executive of United Learning Trust and a former director general for schools at the Department for Education, and based his claim on an assertion that his trust had been actively preparing for potential school closures, providing advice on remote education and safeguarding, but the DfE did not provide the necessary direction or directives.
From the information provided to the Inquiry:
-
There was no plan for school closures until the day before they were announced March 17, 2020).
-
Johnson is trying to argue that he assumed the Department for Education was preparing one.
-
The DfE’s top civil servant and the education secretary at the time both deny that assumption.
Johnson’s defence is essentially: “I thought someone else was doing it,” which, to a public inquiry, sounds like a collapse of governance — exactly the kind of abdication of responsibility that the Inquiry exists to expose.
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It is painfully clear that Downing Street, the DfE, and other departments were not co-ordinated in the way education in the UK was to be handled under pandemic conditions.
Then-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson blames No 10 for blocking contingency planning; Johnson blames Williamson and his civil servants for not acting sooner. And Home Secretary Priti Patel, together with her officials, were warning that closing schools would expose vulnerable children to abuse and exploitation — but those warnings appear to have been ignored.
So the Inquiry has exposed not just poor planning but a disintegration of ministerial coordination – toxic for a former prime minister whose big claim was that he was decisive and “getting things done”.
These failures caused quantifiable, lasting harm to children and young people who were going through the education system at the time.
The most visible damage was academic: pupils lost months of direct teaching, and although online learning filled some gaps, it was hugely unequal — children from wealthier families often had laptops, quiet spaces, and support, while poorer children did not.
The Education Endowment Foundation found that by 2022, pupils in disadvantaged areas were on average six months behind in reading and nine months behind in maths compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Exam outcomes in 2021 and 2022 bore this out: the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils widened for the first time in a decade.
Arguably the most worrying legacies are behavioural and attendance problems: persistent absenteeism – missing more than 10 per cent of school sessions – has doubled compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Suspensions and exclusions are at record highs, as schools struggle with pupils who have missed key socialisation milestones.
Teachers report an increase in disruptive behaviour, anxiety, and disengagement from learning.
Many children, especially those with special educational needs, found the return to school traumatic after months of isolation and unstructured time.
One of the most striking and well-documented effects, particularly for younger children, was a delay in speech and language proficiency: nurseries and reception classes reported marked delays in speech, vocabulary, and social communication after long periods at home; there was a marked increase in referrals for speech and language therapy; and The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has confirmed that demand for services is still higher than before the pandemic, especially among children who started school in 2020–2021.
The next few effects are closely linked. Firstly, children fell into screen addiction and sedentary habits. Children’s screen time soared during lockdowns, not just for learning but for entertainment and social contact.
Public Health England has reported – consequential? – increases in obesity, poor sleep, and reduced physical fitness, with 2021 data showing one in four Year 6 children classed as obese — the highest rate ever recorded.
The habits established then have proved hard to break: more sedentary behaviour, less outdoor play, and higher reported anxiety linked to social media dependence.
This leads us directly to what is perhaps the most enduring consequence: mental and emotional illness.
NHS data show that one in five children aged eight–16 now has a probable mental health disorder — up from one in nine before the pandemic. Waiting lists for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) have exploded.
Many children developed anxiety about illness, separation, or social interaction; others experienced depression linked to loneliness or lost milestones (exams, prom, team sports).
Teachers report that resilience and concentration levels are significantly lower than before 2020.
Continuity of Neglect: From Pandemic Abandonment to Policy Denial
Let’s clarify this in the minds of our law-makers: mental and emotional illness caused by pandemic lockdowns is now directly responsible for the surge in sickness and disability benefit claims by people aged up to 22.
NHS data show that the number of under-25s receiving treatment for anxiety and depression has nearly doubled since 2020.
The same cohort — those who were teenagers during lockdown — are now the young adults showing up in PIP and ESA claims, often with diagnoses of long-term anxiety, PTSD-type symptoms, or neurodevelopmental issues exacerbated by social isolation and disrupted education.
So when the current government describes the rise in sickness and disability claims as a “fiscal problem” rather than a public health legacy, it is effectively denying the causal chain that began with state policy failures during the pandemic years.
These are people who are suffering the direct consequences of being abandoned by government during the pandemic, and the current Labour government’s attitude to them is that it cannot afford the cost of putting them on benefit, and the NHS cannot cope with their treatment requirements (look at the size of the waiting lists) so instead it will legislate that they cannot be ill. That is how the government plans to fix its administrative problem: by denying reality. Isn’t that a worse “dereliction of duty” than Johnson’s?
The Johnson era’s dereliction was a failure to plan and protect.
The Labour government’s emerging one – already active in its refusal to give disability-related Universal Credit to anybody aged 22 or under – is a failure to acknowledge and respond.
Current and recent rhetoric from Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall and others frames benefit growth as a “crisis of inactivity”, not of health. Yet the data show that:
-
Mental and behavioural disorders now account for more than half of all new incapacity claims among 16-24-year-olds.
-
CAMHS waiting lists exceed 500,000 children and teenagers, with some waiting more than a year for assessment.
-
Adult mental-health services are also at record overload.
In other words, these young claimants are not malingering — they’re the same children the Covid Inquiry has just described as suffering lasting harm.
To legislate tighter benefit conditions or “redefine” sickness so fewer people qualify is therefore to re-victimise the very generation already harmed by previous government failure.
Labour’s current dereliction of duty is worse than Johnson’s because his was failure in the face of uncertainty; Reeves and Starmer’s is failure in full knowledge of the consequences.
In 2020, children were abandoned because the state had no plan. In 2025, those same children — now young adults — are being abandoned again because the state has no heart.
Next we come to Priti Patel’s Home Office concerns: vulnerability and safeguarding failures.
When schools closed, safeguarding “eyes and ears” disappeared: teachers, school nurses, and pastoral staff weren’t seeing children daily. Social services lost contact with tens of thousands of at-risk children.
Reports of domestic abuse, child exploitation, and neglect rose sharply, but detection lagged behind (this was reported in the media; Vox Political carried multiple articles about it).
Some vulnerable children simply vanished from the education system altogether and haven’t reappeared — the so-called “ghost children”.
Add it all up, and we had widening inequality: the closures magnified existing inequalities between rich and poor children, urban and rural communities (where broadband access was worse), and children with and without special educational needs.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Sutton Trust both found that middle-class children received more than 75 per cent more teacher contact time during lockdowns than working-class peers. That gap has had long-term consequences in secondary and further education outcomes.
Considering the Tory bias in favour of rich people, some might suggest that this was a happy outcome for Johnson’s government, and one that it would have had no interest in correcting.
Finally, there’s loss of routine, trust, and social skills – an intangible but real effect on how children relate to authority, learning, and each other.
Many grew up during a period of fear and uncertainty. Young children missed crucial windows for developing empathy, play, and co-operation. Teenagers who should have been learning independence instead experienced prolonged parental supervision and isolation.
These effects don’t disappear when lockdown ends — they ripple forward into adulthood – as we have seen in the effect on their mental health.
This matters for Johnson because these aren’t abstract “pandemic effects” — they’re consequences of government decisions.
The Inquiry is not hearing that the virus didn’t make closures necessary, but that the lack of preparation and leadership worsened the damage.
Johnson’s own words — that school closures were a “nightmare idea” and that children “paid a huge, huge price” — effectively concede the central charge: that the government knew it was harmful but failed to plan or mitigate it properly.
So when we talk about “lasting harm,” we’re not just describing what happened to children.
We’re also defining the cost of Boris Johnson’s decisions — and that’s what makes this stage of the Inquiry so devastating for him.
Johnson’s defence strategy consists of three lines:
-
“It was a nightmare decision.” — humanising the emotional cost.
-
“We followed the science.” — pushing responsibility toward Sage and official advice.
-
“I assumed departments were preparing.” — suggesting bureaucratic rather than political failure.
The problem is that those three arguments contradict each other:
- If it was a nightmare decision, why was there no plan?
-
If he followed the science, why does he now say closures went “too far”?
-
And if he assumed planning was happening, where was the prime ministerial oversight?
Johnson won’t face legal charges from this evidence — but reputationally, it’s another hammer blow.
This week’s testimony cements a narrative that he was:
Even his attempt to praise the DfE’s “heroic” performance has backfired — mocked by opposition MPs and teachers as an insult to those who actually kept the country running.
Baroness Hallett’s final report is likely to record that the lack of contingency planning for education was a serious failure of leadership. That is likely to be quoted for years as part of any definitive account of his premiership.
Let’s be clear, though: he’s not going to face any direct legal or political consequences as a result of this evidence.
There won’t be any legal action unless the Inquiry finds clear evidence of dishonesty or deliberate obstruction.
Politically, he’s a spent force anyway — this evidence just reinforces why the Conservatives moved on.
But his historical reputation is in deep trouble. The Inquiry’s final report will likely crystallise him as the prime minister who failed to protect the UK’s children in the pandemic.
That will sit alongside earlier findings of chaos and indecision in other areas (care homes, PPE, communications).
It also increases pressure on his allies and Cabinet colleagues — including Williamson and Patel — who may face further scrutiny.
That may come as some comfort to those of us who lived through the pandemic.
But it will be no comfort for those who are still suffering its consequences – especially at the hands of a Labour government that would rather write them off as an administrative inconvenience than pay the price of Johnson’s mistakes.
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The pandemic prime minister who failed to protect our children – and the government still failing them now
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From the evidence he gave to the Covid-19 Inquiry yesterday (October 21, 2025), the answer is yes – but not all responsibility can be laid at his door.
Sir Jon Coles is the chief executive of United Learning Trust and a former director general for schools at the Department for Education, and based his claim on an assertion that his trust had been actively preparing for potential school closures, providing advice on remote education and safeguarding, but the DfE did not provide the necessary direction or directives.
From the information provided to the Inquiry:
There was no plan for school closures until the day before they were announced March 17, 2020).
Johnson is trying to argue that he assumed the Department for Education was preparing one.
The DfE’s top civil servant and the education secretary at the time both deny that assumption.
Johnson’s defence is essentially: “I thought someone else was doing it,” which, to a public inquiry, sounds like a collapse of governance — exactly the kind of abdication of responsibility that the Inquiry exists to expose.
It is painfully clear that Downing Street, the DfE, and other departments were not co-ordinated in the way education in the UK was to be handled under pandemic conditions.
Then-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson blames No 10 for blocking contingency planning; Johnson blames Williamson and his civil servants for not acting sooner. And Home Secretary Priti Patel, together with her officials, were warning that closing schools would expose vulnerable children to abuse and exploitation — but those warnings appear to have been ignored.
So the Inquiry has exposed not just poor planning but a disintegration of ministerial coordination – toxic for a former prime minister whose big claim was that he was decisive and “getting things done”.
These failures caused quantifiable, lasting harm to children and young people who were going through the education system at the time.
The most visible damage was academic: pupils lost months of direct teaching, and although online learning filled some gaps, it was hugely unequal — children from wealthier families often had laptops, quiet spaces, and support, while poorer children did not.
The Education Endowment Foundation found that by 2022, pupils in disadvantaged areas were on average six months behind in reading and nine months behind in maths compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Exam outcomes in 2021 and 2022 bore this out: the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils widened for the first time in a decade.
Arguably the most worrying legacies are behavioural and attendance problems: persistent absenteeism – missing more than 10 per cent of school sessions – has doubled compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Suspensions and exclusions are at record highs, as schools struggle with pupils who have missed key socialisation milestones.
Teachers report an increase in disruptive behaviour, anxiety, and disengagement from learning.
Many children, especially those with special educational needs, found the return to school traumatic after months of isolation and unstructured time.
One of the most striking and well-documented effects, particularly for younger children, was a delay in speech and language proficiency: nurseries and reception classes reported marked delays in speech, vocabulary, and social communication after long periods at home; there was a marked increase in referrals for speech and language therapy; and The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has confirmed that demand for services is still higher than before the pandemic, especially among children who started school in 2020–2021.
The next few effects are closely linked. Firstly, children fell into screen addiction and sedentary habits. Children’s screen time soared during lockdowns, not just for learning but for entertainment and social contact.
Public Health England has reported – consequential? – increases in obesity, poor sleep, and reduced physical fitness, with 2021 data showing one in four Year 6 children classed as obese — the highest rate ever recorded.
The habits established then have proved hard to break: more sedentary behaviour, less outdoor play, and higher reported anxiety linked to social media dependence.
This leads us directly to what is perhaps the most enduring consequence: mental and emotional illness.
NHS data show that one in five children aged eight–16 now has a probable mental health disorder — up from one in nine before the pandemic. Waiting lists for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) have exploded.
Many children developed anxiety about illness, separation, or social interaction; others experienced depression linked to loneliness or lost milestones (exams, prom, team sports).
Teachers report that resilience and concentration levels are significantly lower than before 2020.
Continuity of Neglect: From Pandemic Abandonment to Policy Denial
Let’s clarify this in the minds of our law-makers: mental and emotional illness caused by pandemic lockdowns is now directly responsible for the surge in sickness and disability benefit claims by people aged up to 22.
NHS data show that the number of under-25s receiving treatment for anxiety and depression has nearly doubled since 2020.
The same cohort — those who were teenagers during lockdown — are now the young adults showing up in PIP and ESA claims, often with diagnoses of long-term anxiety, PTSD-type symptoms, or neurodevelopmental issues exacerbated by social isolation and disrupted education.
So when the current government describes the rise in sickness and disability claims as a “fiscal problem” rather than a public health legacy, it is effectively denying the causal chain that began with state policy failures during the pandemic years.
These are people who are suffering the direct consequences of being abandoned by government during the pandemic, and the current Labour government’s attitude to them is that it cannot afford the cost of putting them on benefit, and the NHS cannot cope with their treatment requirements (look at the size of the waiting lists) so instead it will legislate that they cannot be ill. That is how the government plans to fix its administrative problem: by denying reality. Isn’t that a worse “dereliction of duty” than Johnson’s?
The Johnson era’s dereliction was a failure to plan and protect.
The Labour government’s emerging one – already active in its refusal to give disability-related Universal Credit to anybody aged 22 or under – is a failure to acknowledge and respond.
Current and recent rhetoric from Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall and others frames benefit growth as a “crisis of inactivity”, not of health. Yet the data show that:
Mental and behavioural disorders now account for more than half of all new incapacity claims among 16-24-year-olds.
CAMHS waiting lists exceed 500,000 children and teenagers, with some waiting more than a year for assessment.
Adult mental-health services are also at record overload.
In other words, these young claimants are not malingering — they’re the same children the Covid Inquiry has just described as suffering lasting harm.
To legislate tighter benefit conditions or “redefine” sickness so fewer people qualify is therefore to re-victimise the very generation already harmed by previous government failure.
Labour’s current dereliction of duty is worse than Johnson’s because his was failure in the face of uncertainty; Reeves and Starmer’s is failure in full knowledge of the consequences.
In 2020, children were abandoned because the state had no plan. In 2025, those same children — now young adults — are being abandoned again because the state has no heart.
Next we come to Priti Patel’s Home Office concerns: vulnerability and safeguarding failures.
When schools closed, safeguarding “eyes and ears” disappeared: teachers, school nurses, and pastoral staff weren’t seeing children daily. Social services lost contact with tens of thousands of at-risk children.
Reports of domestic abuse, child exploitation, and neglect rose sharply, but detection lagged behind (this was reported in the media; Vox Political carried multiple articles about it).
Some vulnerable children simply vanished from the education system altogether and haven’t reappeared — the so-called “ghost children”.
Add it all up, and we had widening inequality: the closures magnified existing inequalities between rich and poor children, urban and rural communities (where broadband access was worse), and children with and without special educational needs.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Sutton Trust both found that middle-class children received more than 75 per cent more teacher contact time during lockdowns than working-class peers. That gap has had long-term consequences in secondary and further education outcomes.
Considering the Tory bias in favour of rich people, some might suggest that this was a happy outcome for Johnson’s government, and one that it would have had no interest in correcting.
Finally, there’s loss of routine, trust, and social skills – an intangible but real effect on how children relate to authority, learning, and each other.
Many grew up during a period of fear and uncertainty. Young children missed crucial windows for developing empathy, play, and co-operation. Teenagers who should have been learning independence instead experienced prolonged parental supervision and isolation.
These effects don’t disappear when lockdown ends — they ripple forward into adulthood – as we have seen in the effect on their mental health.
This matters for Johnson because these aren’t abstract “pandemic effects” — they’re consequences of government decisions.
The Inquiry is not hearing that the virus didn’t make closures necessary, but that the lack of preparation and leadership worsened the damage.
Johnson’s own words — that school closures were a “nightmare idea” and that children “paid a huge, huge price” — effectively concede the central charge: that the government knew it was harmful but failed to plan or mitigate it properly.
So when we talk about “lasting harm,” we’re not just describing what happened to children.
We’re also defining the cost of Boris Johnson’s decisions — and that’s what makes this stage of the Inquiry so devastating for him.
Johnson’s defence strategy consists of three lines:
“It was a nightmare decision.” — humanising the emotional cost.
“We followed the science.” — pushing responsibility toward Sage and official advice.
“I assumed departments were preparing.” — suggesting bureaucratic rather than political failure.
The problem is that those three arguments contradict each other:
If he followed the science, why does he now say closures went “too far”?
And if he assumed planning was happening, where was the prime ministerial oversight?
Johnson won’t face legal charges from this evidence — but reputationally, it’s another hammer blow.
This week’s testimony cements a narrative that he was:
inattentive to detail,
unable to manage his ministers, and
dismissive of children’s welfare during a national emergency.
Even his attempt to praise the DfE’s “heroic” performance has backfired — mocked by opposition MPs and teachers as an insult to those who actually kept the country running.
Baroness Hallett’s final report is likely to record that the lack of contingency planning for education was a serious failure of leadership. That is likely to be quoted for years as part of any definitive account of his premiership.
Let’s be clear, though: he’s not going to face any direct legal or political consequences as a result of this evidence.
There won’t be any legal action unless the Inquiry finds clear evidence of dishonesty or deliberate obstruction.
Politically, he’s a spent force anyway — this evidence just reinforces why the Conservatives moved on.
But his historical reputation is in deep trouble. The Inquiry’s final report will likely crystallise him as the prime minister who failed to protect the UK’s children in the pandemic.
That will sit alongside earlier findings of chaos and indecision in other areas (care homes, PPE, communications).
It also increases pressure on his allies and Cabinet colleagues — including Williamson and Patel — who may face further scrutiny.
That may come as some comfort to those of us who lived through the pandemic.
But it will be no comfort for those who are still suffering its consequences – especially at the hands of a Labour government that would rather write them off as an administrative inconvenience than pay the price of Johnson’s mistakes.
Support Vox Political!
With social media algorithms acting as gatekeepers – allowing users to read only what their owners want them to, sites like Vox Political need the support of our readers like never before.
You can help by making a donation:
https://Ko-fi.com/voxpolitical
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