Our Kids Have Been Cheated

Over the last two years of lockdowns and lockouts, our kids have been cheated of their education entitlement.  Simply devaluing their exams, as the government proposes, only compounds it.

The government, knows that, over the last two years, our kids have been deprived of their education, as a result of the imposition of lockdowns and lockouts.  Rather than making up that lost education, by opening schools during holidays, weekends, evenings, and so on, or simply extending the number of years at school for all those that have lost out, the government, instead, intends to simply devalue the exams they are going to take, by telling students what is going to appear on exam papers.  In the last two years, they did a similar thing, by simply marking papers more leniently.  But, that simply compounds the injury they have inflicted on our kids, because everyone, including the kids themselves will know that their exams have been fiddled, and are not worth the same as the certificates of others that took the exams in previous times, and who have had, basically 20% more education.

This is typical of a government, and indeed, a society that fetishes bits of paper over what those bits of paper are supposed to represent.  The same has happened with the money tokens that the government has printed like confetti, and which have also, then been devalued leading to the rampant inflation that is now becoming manifest in the economy.  But, all of those money tokens are indistinguishable from each other whereas exam certificates are distinguishable.  Universities may not care that the applicants for places have devalued certificates, having been deprived of 20% of their education, because, they have become money making institutions eager to simply pull in as many customers as possible so as to get hold of their tuition fees, and so on, but employers will certainly know that the bits of paper that students come away with from exams this year, and for several years to come will not be worth the same as those from previous years.

Imagine you were about to have brain or heart surgery, and looking into the surgeon about to do the operation, you found that they had not completed the course, having missed out in 20% of the education and training they should have had.  It would not fill you with confidence would it?  And, if the surgeon told you that you should not worry, because they had a piece of paper which said that, despite this 20% deficiency in their education and training, they were to be considered on an equal par with every other surgeon, that would not really assuage your concerns would it?

The fact is that, our kids have been cheated of 20% of their education entitlement as a result of lockdowns an lockouts, and trying to deal with that by then devaluing their exams only makes it worse.  There was, in reality, no reason why kids should have lost out on education at all.  Covid does not affect young people, unless they have some serious issues with their immune system.  Indeed, it does not seriously affect the vast majority of people under 60, unless they have some problem with their immune system.  So, there was no risk to kids going to school, from Covid, and nor, for the vast majority of teachers, and other school staff was there any serious risk that would have justified closing schools, and depriving kids of their education.

Its true that some teachers, and school staff, were at risk from COVID, either because of their age, or because of some underlying medical condition, but they represented only a small minority.  They of course, had a right to be protected, and that is what should have happened rather than closing down the school system as a whole.  Any teachers at risk, should have been put on leave with full pay, and their places should have been filled by other teachers who were not in an at risk group.  The teaching unions, and UNISON, should have brought school workers together to ensure that this was done, and also that they implemented regimes of workers' inspection in schools, to ensure that proper safety measures were in place to protect teachers, pupils and other workers.

But, also, from the end of 2020, vaccines became available, so that anyone in an at risk category could have been fully vaccinated, enabling them to go back to work without fear of becoming seriously ill.  Of course, it would not have prevented them from being infected, but if the focus on infections had been scrapped - because it is meaningless - as against focusing on illness, there would have been no need to have wasted time and money with incessant, and meaningless testing, and so no need to have continually closed schools, simply because of some new instance of infection.

None of that was done, and as Dr, Clive Dix, the former head of the Vaccination Agency has said, instead what we had was 2 years of madness, a madness that both unnecessarily cratered the economy, but also cheated our kids of a substantial part of their educational entitlement.  Of course, in reality, not all kids have been cheated.  The kids of the rich could largely continue to get their education, provided by tutors, many of them the same teachers that ply their trade in the high fee paying schools, as well as having access to online learning, at home in a conducive environment, with lots of educational materials at hand.

No, the kids that have been really cheated are the kids of ordinary working-class families who do not have such facilities, even where they might have a laptop or PC, and an adequate broadband provision.  Even worse affected are the kids of the poorer families, the families stuck in already cramped housing, with nowhere to study, let alone the provision of educational materials or a decent broadband service.  They are the ones who will never get back the 20% of the education they have lost as a result of the crazy policy of lockdowns and lockouts, and of even less necessary school closures.  And, that means its not just those taking exams this year who will have been cheated.  Anyone who has been of school age over the last two years, has lost out on that education provision. 

The youngest may have time to recoup some of it, over the whole of their time at school, but they will always have been disadvantaged compared to those who received their full entitlement to education.  It means that as far as this deficiency of education, resulting from the imposition of lockdowns, is concerned, it will continue to have an effect for at least another 10-12 years.  It means that the life chances of all those kids has been unnecessarily diminished as a result of the imposition of lockdowns, which were a crazy means of responding to the pandemic, and particularly so when it came to kids who were not in any way affected by the virus.

The obvious solution, now, would be to simply tack on 2 years of additional education for all of those kids, but the government is not going to do that, given the cost, especially given the massive other costs coming in the pipeline as a result of the imposition of lockdowns, and the printing of confetti money to pay for it.  Alternatively, schools could be opened during school holidays, weekends and so on, to allow kids to catch up, but that is not going to happen either, both because the government is not going to fund that cost, because parents would probably object, and teachers would probably object to having to work all of these additional hours.

So, kids will just have to face up to the fact that they have lost this education provision, and so their job and earnings prospects will have been permanently damaged as a result of the imposition of lockdowns.  It is another one of those costs of a crazy policy that will last for years after the pandemic itself has faded into memory.