Now in its eighth module, the long-running Covid inquiry has turned its attention the impact of the pandemic on children and young people.

Today, Gavin Williamson - who headed was education secretary during the pandemic - has been answering some of the inquiry's questions. Here's what he said:

• "The key thrust" of government policy was to keep schools open, in early Spring of 2020, Williamson said, adding that his department lacked the autonomy to prepare for school closures without Downing Street approval
• Williamson also expressed regret that schools were not closed sooner

• The government paper on school closures was commissioned and drafted the night before Boris Johnson - then prime minister - announced schools were to close for the first time on 18 March 2020, Williamson confirmed
• Johnson gave schools "a false sense of hope", Williamson said, when he announced in May 2020 that schools could reopen - Williamson pointed to the impossibility of meeting social distancing requirements
• When schools reopened again in September 2020, a "fallback" plan in the case of another national lockdown was kept secret from schools, because the government worried it would give them an "excuse not to open in September", according to government papers
• And a model used to calculate students' grades in the summer of 2020 - when exams were cancelled - was "quite clearly wrong", Williamson said, and the department "always understood that there were some students who wouldn't get the grades they deserve"

We're ending our live coverage here now. But the inquiry is continuing to hear more evidence today - you can keep following along by pressing watch live at the top of the page.

Gavin Williamson has now finished taking questions from the inquiry as attendees take a short break.

In a few minutes, the inquiry will question Jean Blair, on behalf of the Scottish Qualifications Authority.

We won't be covering Blair's questioning in text here, but you'll still be able to follow along by pressing watch live at the top of the page.

Image source, PA Media

Next Williamson is asked how the Department for Education grappled with guidance from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), and what was it about that advice that he deemed to be wrong.

Speaking about the guidance over school closures, Williamson says it would betray his "natural interest" to see schools not deliver education, adding that he did what he thought was right for children.

"The best interest of children was to be able to get education, in a classroom, with their amazing teachers," he says.

Pressed on whether he took on board the advice, Williamson says his job was to do what was in the best interest of children, not make epidemiological assessments.

A question now from a man speaking on behalf of children's rights organisations.

He asks to what extent children and young people's rights and needs were prioritised in decision making at the heart of government.

"Most of the time" they were, says Williamson.

"I viewed it as my responsibility to try and battle for those who would not have a voice around the cabinet table," he says.

But he adds that people are not able to attend every meeting.

Referencing a specific meeting he did not attend, where the decision was made to close schools, he says this should change for future pandemic planning.

"Going forward," he explains, "if you are going to make the decision to close schools, you need to have the education secretary there to be a part of that."

Counsel Clair Dobbin's questioning of Gavin Williamson has finished.

Now it's time for the inquiry's core participants to question the former education secretary.

A legal representative for Long Covid Kids and Long Covid Kids Scotland starts by asking Williamson why the Department for Education downgraded proposed guidance to schools about long covid to "informal", just before pupils returned to classrooms in September 2021.

Williamson says this was "probably on the advice we were receiving from maybe the Department for Health and Social Care".

The legal representative asks if it "wasn't it essential" to give support and advice to schools after the government was told that cases of long covid were growing by May 2021, before telling the inquiry that no advice at all was circulated in the end.

"We are not a Department for Health. We're a Department for Education," Williamson says, adding it was a "newly-emerging issue we'd become aware of" and that "rushed" and "incorrect" advice "would have been even more damaging" than admitting none at all.

Branwen Jeffreys
Education editor, at the inquiry

Tensions at the heart of government during the pandemic have emerged at the Covid-19 inquiry.

Gavin Williamson has described the decision to open, then close, primary schools on 4 January 2021 as “panicked”.

The inquiry heard about plans put in place for secondary pupils to also be tested at the start of that spring term ahead of opening, which was then delayed.

Pupils eventually had to wait until 8 March for a phased return for all year groups.

It also has emerged that Downing Street appointed Kevan Collins as the education recovery tsar, without consulting the education secretary.

An email from Williamson to Boris Johnson was read out in which he described - in expletive terms - his anger as a result of “an appointment you don’t have the proper courtesy to discuss with me”, and that he felt “screwed over again”.

Image source, EPA

Nabiha Ahmed
Reporting from the inquiry

Gasps fill the press room as Dobbin reads out the angry message Gavin Williamson sent to the then prime minister.

Those around me immediately take out their phones to snap a picture of the message displayed on a screen in front of us.

We're now seeing a message Williamson sent to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in February 2021.

The strongly worded message shows Williamson's frustration with how things were being handled by the government at the time.

Williamson’s message, which begins with “PM, I always like to be polite in our conversations but I must confess to feeling a little hacked off”, is followed by a series of swear words.

It ends by saying the last time he was treated that badly by a sitting prime minister was on 1 May 2019 - “and that didn’t work out well”.

He was referring to his time as secretary of defence under Theresa May, when he was sacked after an inquiry into a leak from a top-level National Security Council meeting.

As the inquiry resumes, we’re hearing that fomer Education Secretary Gavin Williamson called the decision to close schools again in January 2021 “a panicked decision” and one that “did not sufficient take children’s interest or wellbeing into account”.

“That’s a grave allegation to make,” says Counsel Clair Dobbin.

Referring to a comment made by his colleague Michael Gove - who was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the time - Williamson replies, “when you hear phrases like closing schools is like smashing a Ming vase on the floor to get people’s attention - it shows a lack of seriousness of actually not putting children first”.

Asked if then Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed a “lack of seriousness”, Williamson says the prime minister ultimately has to choose what to prioritise.

“I think he chose the NHS over children.”

“I felt that the consequences for children weren’t properly taken into account,” he adds.

• You can go to our earlier post here for a timeline of school closures during the pandemic

Branwen Jeffreys
Education editor, at the inquiry

What has emerged this morning at the Covid-19 inquiry is a sense of chaotic decision-making around the lives of children and young people.

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary at the time, was asked if the complete lack of a plan for school closures was a “dereliction of duty”.

He’s suggested last-minute decisions were often made by the then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and attacked the main education union.

In response the National Education Union said: “Throughout, Williamson was the bringer of chaos. It disgusts the profession that for this he was rewarded with a knighthood.”

It’s also become clear the government was warned months ahead of the exam results fiasco of August 2020 that some students would get unfair results.

Later, Boris Johnson would blame it on a “mutant algorithm”, before scrapping the first set of grades for teacher assessed results.

Earlier, Gavin Williamson was asked about the way students were graded during the pandemic, when public exams were cancelled - and we said we'd bring you some more background on this.

As promised, here's a refresher on what happened during 2020 and 2021.

2020

• All exams were cancelled, including GCSEs and A-Levels
• At first, an algorithm is used to decide students' grades - it mainly looked at how students were ranked in order of ability, and the results their schools or colleges had got in previous years
• After A-Level results day, there was an outcry over the algorithm, which led Williamson to issue an apology, and Ofqual to switch to grades assessed by schools

2021

• GCSEs and A-Levels exams were cancelled again
• Grades were decided by teachers, based on a mix of mock exams, coursework and essays

Image source, Reuters

The Covid Inquiry has just returned from its lunchtime recess.

We've been hearing today from former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, who led the department during the Covid pandemic. He's now answering more questions from Counsel Clair Dobbin.

We'll be bringing you all the key lines here, and a reminder that you can watch live at the top of this page.

Nabiha Ahmed
Reporting from the inquiry

I've been speaking to Sioux Vosper, a campaigner for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, who says she has been attending almost every hearing of the Covid inquiry.

A mother of four young people, she says this module of the hearing is hard to hear.

"My children lost their granddad to Covid. It was really hard for them," she tells me outside the inquiry building.

Sioux tells me one of her children still has "severe mental health issues" because of the loss they faced.

Her children also have special education needs, she says, and found it difficult to adjust to schools closing.

Students were undertaking what would usually be practical lab lessons from their room - while also having missed out on this experience in school practical lessons.

"All these decisions were made so late, and young people's lives were decided in the middle of the night," she says.

Vanessa Clarke
Education reporter, reporting at the inquiry

In August 2020, when A-level results were released, there was huge anger and disappointment from students, teachers and parents.

Hundreds of thousands of students had their results downgraded.

Results were calculated by teacher-assessed grades and an algorithm based on things like historical school performance to prevent grade inflation.

Gavin Williamson did apologise at the time and there was a huge U-turn.

Again, today he said the model used was “not the right approach”, admitting he was aware well before results day that it would be unfair to many students.

But Williamson put much of the blame on Ofqual - the exams regulator - saying if he had pushed them to just go on teacher-assessed grades, the Ofqual board would have all resigned.

Ofqual have not yet appeared at the inquiry.

The Covid inquiry is now taking a break for lunch.

The afternoon session is scheduled to resume from 13:45 BST - you will be able to watch live from then at the top of this page.

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

Counsel Clair Dobbin next turns to Gavin Williamson's previous criticism of Boris Johnson - who was prime minister at the time - in his statement to the inquiry.

We hear that Williamson was informed on the 9 May 2020 that Johnson was planning to announce a phased reopening of schools the next day.

In his statement to the inquiry, Williamson called this "a promise he wouldn't be able to keep" and said "the prime minister understood that I didn't agree with his announcement because it was destined to fail".

Dobbin asks Williamson what, specifically, he disagreed with.

Williamson explains that under the social distancing rules in force at the time, classes could only have a maximum of 15 people in them. Schools didn't have double the amount of classrooms or teachers to do this, when classes had previously had 30 people in them.

It was "absolutely clear" the government wasn't going to relax these rules, he says, so "there was no physical way we could do it [reopen schools] without asking every school to basically break the law".

He accuses Johnson of "giving people a false sense of hope" with the announcement.

Boris Johnson "would sometimes veer between different positions", Williamson says.

"We did get things wrong," he adds, before adding: "I'm sure it will have caused him frustrations as it caused all of ourselves frustrations when we didn't get things right".

Former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is now being asked about the model used to grade students during the pandemic.

"We always understood that there were some students who wouldn't get the grades they would deserve, and that's why an appeals system... needed to be put in place," Williamson says.

"There's no perfect form of assessment," he adds.

Williamson is pressed further on this, with Clair Dobbin asking whether the model used was favouring consistency of outcome, rather than recognising fairness to students who might exceed their school's average grades during public exams.

To which, the former education secretary says "the model was quite clearly wrong".

• For context, in 2021, GCSEs and A-levels cancelled in England because of the pandemic were replaced by grades decided by teachers - we’ll explain more about this soon

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

The inquiry has moved to the government’s decision to re-open schools in September 2020.

Referring to government Covid strategy papers, Counsel to the inquiry Clair Dobbin puts it to Gavin Williamson that his department’s “national fallback plan” for blended learning - where students learn both online and face-to-face - in the event of another national lockdown, was “kept a secret” from schools.

One government paper states: “schools should not be told of a fallback plan as it would allow them to have an excuse not to open in September.”

Williamson says the government is keeping the focus on opening schools, and that if it looks like they are planning for another closure, it “could end up becoming the default scenario”.

Dobbin then asks if it’s really the case that a government can’t be open about its plans.

Becoming visibly emotional, Williamson says “I will accept fault on this” but insists it was vital to provide “certainty in order to get children back to school”.

At the inquiry, Gavin Williamson confirms the government paper on school closures was commissioned and drafted overnight.

Noting that stakeholders hadn't been consulted about school closures before this point, Counsel to the inquiry Clair Dobbin asks if "the bottom line is this... there was no plan to implement the closure of schools in England".

Williamson starts talking about the need "to give people the time to stand things up" but is cut off by Dobbin.

"You haven't answered my question, and it's one of the most important questions that Module eight will answer," she says.

She asks again whether "there was no plan... no document... nothing concrete in existence was there" when the prime minister announced schools were to close on 18 March 2020.

Williamson responds that "there was a whole set body of work that had already been started".

"There was people within the department who had started to do that thinking," he says.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

We're now hearing from Gavin Williamson again after a short break.

Stay with us for all the key lines - and remember, you can tap Watch live at the top of the page to follow along.