School closures risk ‘permanent scarring’ to children, adviser warns

Prof Russell Viner said 'school closures and lockdown bring a wide range of serious harms to children's health and well-being'

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School closures risk "permanent scarring", the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has warned.  

Prof Russell Viner, a scientific adviser to the Government, said his latest research proved that keeping children away from the classroom does "serious harm" not only to their education but also to their mental and physical health.

Writing for The Telegraph, he said: "The question of when it is ‘safe’ to reopen schools has focused on the risk that having children back in school will raise Covid-19 infection rates, putting us back where we were in December. Yet when we focus on infection risk we forget the potential for harm that can occur when schools are closed. 

"We know that closing schools harms children’s education. Our research provides clear evidence for the first time that school closures and lockdown also bring a wide range of serious harms to children’s health and well-being."

Prof Viner, an expert in adolescent health at University College London, led a team of researchers who used machine learning to analyse all the available global data on the impacts of school closures on children’s health.

They examined 72 studies from 20 countries in detail and concluded that school closures and lockdown have "very harmful effects for children and young people’s mental health and well-being". Children had higher levels of anxiety and depression, as well as behavioural problems, when schools were closed, they found.

Prof Viner urged ministers to publish a strategy to prevent children’s already "damaged health" from turning into "permanent scarring" and said schools needed to employ more health workers and nurses as well as focus more on prevention and resilience.

Meanwhile, face masks can lead to headaches, drowsiness and difficulty concentrating among children, the world’s first register of their effects on youngsters has shown.

Researchers at Witten/Herdecke University, in Germany, analysed the side-effects experienced by almost 25,000 children whose parents recorded them on an online register in October.

Of the parents who completed the register, 68 per cent said their children complained that they suffered negative effects from wearing a mask. The most common complaint among children who wore a mask for an average of 270 minutes per day was irritability, reported by 60 per cent.

The findings showed that 53 per cent complained of headaches, 50 per cent had difficulty concentrating and 37 per cent experienced drowsiness and fatigue.

The authors of the study, published by Research Square but not yet peer-reviewed, said a benefit-risk analysis of the use of face masks by children was "urgently needed".

They said: "Adults need to collectively reflect the circumstances under which they would be willing to take a residual risk upon themselves in favor of enabling children to have a higher quality of life without having to wear a mask."

Researchers said the online register may have been a bias in favour of those reporting the negative side-effects of masks and randomised controlled trials and representative studies should be carried out to develop a deeper understanding.

On Monday, Boris Johnson announced that secondary school students in England should wear masks in the classroom when it is not possible for them to keep two metres apart.

face masks in schools

Official guidance from the Department for Education (DfE) says children in primary schools do not need to wear masks, but earlier this week The Telegraph revealed that children as young as five have been asked to wear them when schools reopen.

Parents at Selsdon Primary School in Croydon, south London, were told children should wear a mask at all times apart from during sports lessons or when eating or drinking. Parents at Nascot Wood Junior School, Hertfordshire, were told children should wear a "well-fitted" face mask while in the classroom if there is not space to socially distance. The school added that this was voluntary.

DfE officials have written to both schools, saying their stance on masks is not in line with Government guidance and asking them to reconsider.