Pandemic review says ‘schools should have stayed open’

One of the most contentious decisions taken by state governments during the COVID-19 crisis – the mass closure of schools – was avoidable and should not be repeated unless strong health advice outweighs the cost of closures, an independent review of Australia’s pandemic response has found.

A review panel led by Western Sydney University chancellor and former top public servant Peter Shergold found that closing schools in response to outbreaks early in the pandemic was justified, but state governments departed from Australia’s pandemic planning and health advice by shutting all classes for entire school terms in 2020 and 2021.

An independent review found that schools should not have been closed en masse during the pandemic. Credit: Eddie Jim

The panel warned this was “likely to have significant adverse impacts on children’s outcomes in education, social development and mental and physical health”, and contributed to women leaving the workplace to carry the burden of homeschooling.

“Schools should have stayed open,” said the review. “For children and parents (particularly women), we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.

“Women were over 30 per cent more likely than men to leave the workforce in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were more likely to lose pay, burn through leave and fall behind on savings and superannuation.”

The split between the states and the federal government over school closures – led by a co-ordinated push by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian to adopt a tougher public health response – was one of the first significant fractures within national cabinet.

Shergold and his fellow review panel members note that the overlay of politics on public health considerations “weakened the national cabinet’s effectiveness over time” and contributed to an erosion of public trust in Australia’s pandemic response and the health advice it relied on.

“State leaders insisted on going their own way, emboldened by their constitutional prerogatives,” the report concluded.

“Tough action on COVID-19, including the decision to close schools, was judged politically popular by many state leaders. Until that popularity subsided and such policies were relaxed.”

The six-month review was funded by three philanthropic trusts – the John and Myriam Wylie Foundation, the Paul Ramsay Foundation and Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation -- and conducted by Shergold; company director Jillian Broadbent; University of Queensland chancellor and former diplomat Peter Varghese; and Isobel Marshall, women’s rights campaigner and 2021 Young Australian of the Year.

Peter Shergold says governments need to learn from the mistakes of this pandemic.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Their report published on Thursday notes that school closures were felt hardest by children living in low socio-economic postcodes, with a Mitchell Institute study finding that one in five did not have access to a laptop or computer at home.

A survey of NSW teachers in 2020 found that only 18 per cent of teachers in low socio-economic status schools had confidence that their students were learning well from remote classes.

Marshall said she was struck when conducting the review by the way the pandemic had affected school-aged children, particularly those who did not have access to technology and parental supervision or were not safe at home.

“A lot of these students are getting assessed and their marks are reflecting factors completely out of their control and not accounted for in the pandemic planning,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “We needed to place those disadvantages at the forefront of the pandemic response.”

The report calls for cost-benefit and risk-management frameworks to be developed before the next public health crisis, to enable schools and universities to keep classes open unless there is strong health advice that outweighs the likely educational, social and economic cost.

It found no justification for closing entire school systems.

In instances where health advice requires schools to close, classes should stay open for vulnerable children, as well as children of essential workers.

“The experience of jurisdictions that are now safely managing schools through COVID-19 provides a strong evidence base for the policy that should prevail in future pandemics.”

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