Research has conclusively demonstrated that alcohol abuse is a major contributory factor in the shamefully high incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Consumption of alcohol during the pandemic has increased. My intuition tells me, although I have no tangible evidence to prove it, that it is not unconnected to the reported increase in domestic violence. Research has also conclusively demonstrated that educational inequalities are very closely connected to social inequalities. In other words, if you do not do well at school (unless your family is rich enough to cushion you) you will not do well in your life after school. You would have thought that, if policy decisions were remotely based on the evidence, that this government would prioritise the re-opening of schools. If you take the government's rhetoric about 'levelling up' seriously (meaning, I suppose, to invert J. K. Galbraith's pithy formulation, that it wants to comfort the afflicted without afflcting the comfortable), you would think the same. If you are thinking along these lines, you are overlooking the inconvenient fact that this government is neither sane nor rational.
Johnson cannot do serious for long: his libertarian, Cavalier side longs to triumph over those killjoy Roundheads, those dour and dreary scientific experts, who have upstaged him for so long. Let there be 'cakes and ale', and plenty of them ! Drown your sorrows (and let's face it, too many people have plenty of them), and when you have managed to achieve a state of intoxicated oblivion, you might even forget that Dominic Cummings exists. Apart from Johnson, the Conservative Party is restive. The capitalist economy has to resume 'normal service', and people must not become addicted to Rishi Sunak's improvised socialism. People have to be reminded that unemployment exists, or they might start getting 'unrealistic' ideas. So the pubs have to re-open.
There are two connected reasons for the failure of schools to re-open. One is the over-centralisation of the British state, and the atrophy of intermediate institutions, such as local authorities. The other is Gavin Williamson's complete inability to perform his ministerial role. For many years over the last century, local authorities have gradually been stripped of so many powers, including education, that they have been effectively marginalised (this is apparent in the unfolding fiasco of contact tracing, when the experience of local authority environmental health officers has been completely ignored). (For more details on the history of the sidelining of local government see Ian Wray's 'Great British plans' (2016)). The habit of viewing the teachers' unions, the legitimate representatives of the workforce, as the 'enemy' has become deeply ingrained. The government preferred to ignore that Britain is still a pluralist society, and that therefore it would be sensible to consult people. It wanted to pretend that it would issue a diktat, pull a lever, and, as if by magic, schools would re-open. Local authorities and unions were irrelevant and trifling obstacles: they could be ignored. This obsession with centralising decisions, a habit that has become an ingrained assumption over many years in British government, had its logical, if absurd, conclusion in the failure of Williamson's 'decision' to re-open schools. From the point of view of 'controlling the narrative', the government can blame the unions, and escape responsibility.
Children need to be educated, and they need to be in school. It is true that education can happen outside school, but for many families, the theory that 'home schooling' is viable has been tested to destruction. Before the pandemic, it was a 'niche' activity, and with good reason. It is also true that being in school is no guarantee of a good education, but it is a necessary pre-condition of it. For most children, this brute fact is clear: no school, no education. This grotesque apology for a government has committed an act of violence against children (literally in many cases: many children have become more vulnerable to abuse during the lockdown). As the needless casualties of this government's lack of care during the pandemic pile up, children have to be added to the list. The lives of many had already been stunted by austerity: this will kill any hope of progress for many of them.