Image source, Getty Images

Dobbin is again returning to Gavin Williamson’s testimony and highlights specifically how “11th hour this decision was” on 4 January to close schools.

Johnson says he can understand why the former education secretary would feel frustrated with schools reopening only to tell them they would be closed again on the same day.

• For context, on 3 January 2021 Johnson said there was "no doubt in my mind that schools are safe" and urged parents to send children to primary schools the following day. On 4 January, Johnson announced a new national lockdown for England, with all schools and colleges closing to most pupils the following day

He tells the inquiry: “We had to make decisions during the pandemic based on our best judgment at the time."

This was the day Johnson realised they couldn’t continue with the policy of opening the schools, he tells Dobbin. Maybe, he says, he should’ve resolved that earlier in his mind but admits that is easier to say in hindsight.

Dobbin then notes Williamson testified he’d received a call at 12:30 on 4 January informing him that schools would close, but says this seems to show that the DfE were not at the table when this decision was made.

In response, Johnson says this is how the government operates in a time of crisis and that he had to think about every single potential Covid victim.

Johnson says his instincts were the same as Williamson’s, but in the end, they had to put the public health issue first.

I was a teacher, and remember the chaos and confusionpublished at 12:07 BST

12:07 BST

Hayley Clarke
Education reporter

When lockdown was announced, I was a primary school teacher.

I can remember the general sense of chaos and confusion that Boris Johnson has been referencing this morning. At schools, we wondered if and when our doors were going to close.

The little guidance we had at the time included a video on how to wash your hands, which the children laughed at - they thought they knew how to do that already.

In those final days before a lockdown was announced, some parents started to pull their children out of school, so I scrabbled together some resources for home learning.

The half left in class I tried to teach, and put on a reassuring smile when they asked me if the deadly virus would mutate.

When school closed for most pupils, I worried about those at home whose safe haven was our school.

And then I got Covid, and was sent home just before the gates closed.

This became a two-year battle with long Covid - involving severe fatigue, brain fog, and steroid inhalers that I still need to this day.

Five years on I’m mostly better, but the memories of that year stay with me.

Dobbin asks now if it was the "worst of all worlds" when some primary schools opened on 4 January, only to close the same day.

Johnson says it was, and apologises that "their efforts were in vain". He says looking back, he's not certain if closing schools was the only option to get the rate of transmission down - but at the time it seemed to be the only option.

He says the risk they saw at the time was that they would see "a very serious number of fatalities".

"We had to get the R [value] below one, people sometimes forget," he says, adding that something "small" like closing schools could help with that.

The inquiry chair steps in to ask whether the decision to close those schools could have been taken earlier. Johnson says in hindsight "of course" it could have been, but it wasn't as obvious at the time as it seems now.

"At the time I was still very much divided and very, very keen as indeed was Gavin Williamson to see if we could keep going."

Image source, Getty Images

Counsel Clair Dobbin continues her inquiry into the mass testing that was required for the reopening of schools.

She cites previous testimony from teachers, who said at the time that they expected to be in school to teach - not to implement mass testing.

Johnson says there was "huge importance attached to this policy", and that the country "kept going despite obvious difficulties". He says he knew vaccines would be "coming down the track at some point", but that testing was the "only way through" prior to that point.

He acknowledges it was a "huge effort" but says it was "worth it" to get schools back open.

When asked whether another body should have carried out the testing to relieve pressures on teachers and schools - such as the army or health and social care staff - he says he can't remember the full details of the arguments considered at the time.

Dobbin is now asking Johnson about mass testing - and again references the 28 December e-mail from No 10.

She puts to the former prime minister: at this point, was there still no clear plan?

According to Johnson, the DfE and schools were able to stand up the testing for pupils, but they were still at the stages of seeking clarification on this.

But Dobbin wants to know, with such “fundamental questions” still raised in the e-mail, how much Johnson really understood at this point.

Johnson says he wanted to make sure it was all ready to go.

But this “massive effort” was on the shoulders of the DfE and schools, says Dobbin, and not a shared effort.

“I didn’t think it was such an unreasonable thing to ask,” says Johnson.

Image source, Getty Images

Returning now to Boris Johnson's testimony, where counsel Clair Dobbin is grilling the former PM about the time period between December 2020 and January 2021 - when cases were again surging.

It's important, she says, to hear Johnson's perspective about this period, and presents him with a document - the Chair's Brief from the Covid Operations Cabinet Committee on 16 December, 2020.

In it, it's stated that Johnson gave a "strong steer" that he would like the return of face-to-face attendance at schools "to be staggered" and for testing to be used as fully as possible to support this. Dobbin adds that the document states this "is a major delivery challenge".

The document also notes that the education secretary had spoken to Johnson on the day and agreed which pupils would return to school in January, while acknowledging "significant delivery challenges" including workforce testing.

Johnson says he remembers there were difficulties in "standing up the testing operation". He recalls conversations about whether the army would be used or not, but it was concluded schools would do it.

Counsel Dobbin moves now to a 28 December email from No 10. She says at this stage it's "very clear" the new variant was driving transmission. Johnson agrees.

The email states that the education secretary had set out the social costs of reopening schools and outlined plans to return primary schools on 4 January, with secondary schools delayed to 18 January.

Johnson says that during that period, there were "tensions" over opening up and how fast, and the spread of the new variant.

Also in the email, the chief scientific adviser noted that it was known children do transmit and would spread the virus at home. He also noted that transmission went down during half term, suggesting school closures did have an effect.

School closures a 'last resort', Johnson says, but evidence makes clear the gaps in planningpublished at 11:48 BST

11:48 BST

Branwen Jeffreys
Education editor, reporting from the inquiry

School closures for all but a few pupils at the outset of the pandemic have had a long-lasting impact on many children.

Boris Johnson has told the inquiry both that the possibility was being discussed in scientific meetings within government as early as February 2020, and that he was clear it was meant to be a last resort, used later in the pandemic.

It was decided a day before parents were told on 18 March 2020.

A three-page document, drawn together the day before, makes clear the gaps in planning.

Officials warned it would take weeks to get food vouchers to children at risk of going hungry. There was no mention of the most vulnerable children, who would be left at home and at risk in potentially violent homes.

Nine million children would be left with no immediate access to education.

Did the government have contingency planning for pandemic school closures?published at 11:46 BST

11:46 BST

By Ben Chu

As we wait to hear more from Boris Johnson's testimony, let's go back to a moment a bit earlier when he was challenged ​over whether sufficient official planning for the closure of schools in March 2020 had taken place.

The former PM pushed back, saying: “I'm not sure I agree with the idea that there was no planning for school closures, because if you look at the sequence from February onwards, it's clear that Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) is talking about the possibility, the Cabinet is discussing it in March. Certainly I remember the subject coming up repeatedly.”

It’s correct that the prospect of school closures was discussed at Sage., external On 19 February 2020, the group of experts spoke about “the impact of mass school closures”.

However, the top civil servant at the Department for Education (DfE) at the time, Jonathan Slater, wrote in his evidence submitted to the inquiry, external that “DfE's contingency plans were premised on the assumption that schools (and other education settings) would remain open”.

And former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told the inquiry last week that his ability to plan for closures was impeded by Downing Street.

He said: "Something like Covid is being directed from the centre in terms of different departments' responses. You don't have quite the freedom just to go and start going out and consulting with lots of people."

Image source, Getty Images

Boris Johnson is back in the room, and inquiry counsel Clair Dobbin resumes her questioning.

She turns to the closure of schools on 4 January 2021 - which happened just a day after children had returned from the Christmas break.

You would have been keen to ensure that the calamitous closure of schools as occurred in March 2020 wasn't repeated again, she asks.

"It was the last thing I wanted to do," Johnson replies.

Dobbin notes that in December 2020, the DfE issued an increased demand for Covid testing, and Johnson agrees that he wanted to see "mass testing" in schools as a way of keeping them open.

Johnson says that the department acquitted themselves "heroically" in this respect, but "it was never going to be a runner" because of the new alpha variant that arrived at the same time.

There's a question on the manpower required for testing, and Johnson stresses that he was conscious of the extra burden being put on teachers.

"But on the whole schools did stand up a quite extraordinary amounts of testing capability," he adds.

• For context, in December 2020 one head teacher told the BBC that staff felt "broken" by last-minute demands for them to run testing schemes at secondary schools in England. The move was also criticised by a number of teaching unions

We are now resuming our coverage of the Covid inquiry where former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is giving evidence about the effect of the pandemic on young people.

As a reminder, we're bringing you key lines and analysis here, but you can also follow along by pressing watch live at the top of the page.

We've been hearing this morning quite a bit about how students in the UK did not sit exams in 2020 because schools were closed following the coronavirus lockdown.

In England, they were given grades by the official exam regulator, Ofqual.

Teachers were asked to supply for each pupil for every subject:

• An estimated grade
• A ranking compared with every other pupil at the school within that same estimated grade

These were put through an algorithm, which also factored in the school's performances in each subject over the previous three years.

The idea was that the grades this year - even without exams - would be consistent with how schools had done in the past.

But, when A-level grades were announced in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 13 August, nearly 40% were lower than teachers' assessments.

There were similar issues in Scotland.

Ofqual said that its objective for A-level results, external was to ensure that national results were "broadly similar to previous years".

However, by basing it so much around previous school performance, a bright student from an underperforming school was likely to have their results downgraded through no fault of their own.

Likewise, a school which was in the process of rapid improvement would not have seen this progress reflected in results.

• Our news story has more on how the government went on to change its mind on the algorithm - by reflecting original teachers' estimates

Elliot Burrin
Live reporter

We're now part way through Boris Johnson's second testimony at the Covid inquiry, where he's being grilled about the effect the pandemic had on young people.

Here's what he's said so far:

• Johnson accepts that government should have begun planning earlier for school closures, but lacked sufficient “knowledge about Covid"
• He insists that “work had been going on” to plan school closures - but documents he referenced were dated just days before schools were shut
• Closing schools was a “nightmare idea”, Johnson says, and the lack of scientific knowledge on Covid-19 at the time meant things were difficult to plan for
• The former prime minister was pressed on his government's decision to cancel GCSE's and A-level examinations in 2020, admitting that scrapping exams was a “disaster” and many students were left disappointed - but that it wasn't easy to find an alternative

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

Also heard before the break, counsel Clair Dobbin asked Boris Johnson about how the government communicated with schools in the lead-up to them reopening in August 2020.

"It seems there was a deliberate tactical decision not to inform schools of a fall-back plan when they were reopening," Dobbin says.

She asks whether it was fair to "keep them in the dark" about the existence of such a plan.

Johnson says he doesn't think the intention was to keep schools in the dark, but rather to "keep it simple".

Shortly before the break, Dobbin pressed the former prime minister about messages he exchanged about former education secretary Gavin Williamson's performance on 21 August, 2020.

"We need a plan for the department for education," said Johnson in messages to advisers Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, adding: "We can't go on like this. I am thinking of going into number ten and firing people."

Johnson also said he was in a "thoroughly homicidal mood".

That "reveals the truth" of what Johnson thought of leadership at the DfE, Dobbin suggests.

Johnson says: "It certainly reveals that in that particular moment, when I fired off that particular intemperate message, I was in a very bad mood about what had happened."

Dobbin notes that then-permanent secretary Slater did then leave the department, but Williamson stayed. She asks whether Johnson should have asked Williamson to go.

Johnson responds that, looking back at his handling of his "beloved colleagues" during his time in government, he can think of "all sorts of changes" he could have made.

"I don't think there's any point in speculating now."

He says that "on the whole" and considering the difficulties faced, the department did a pretty "heroic job" trying to cope with the pandemic.

With that, Boris Johnson is told it is time for the inquiry to take a short break, before it resumes at 11:30 BST.

Until then, we'll catch you up with any key details you may have missed from the former prime minister's testimony.

Image source, Getty Images

Dobbin is now pushing Johnson on the length of time it took the government to reflect on the chaos around the exam results in the summer of 2020.

He accepts that the impact of the pandemic was a "nightmare" for the DfE to respond to, particularly with exams, but says he thinks Williamson and his teams were doing their best.

Dobbin, though, says the 24 August document suggests that issues with the algorithm were known in advance of results day and could have been corrected.

Johnson doesn't have much to add, and replies: "It seems to me that the department has got abundant explanation for the problems of the model it chose."

Dobbin then delves into the DfE's management of the situation, and Johnson agrees that the level of "public outcry" at the results meant he thought about whether there was a need to respond by changing people's jobs.

Meanwhile for children, Johnson says "it was a bad system", and an "accident of the great difficulties we faced in improvising in exceptionally difficult circumstances".

Read more about how the GCSE's and A-levels algorithm worked here.

Image source, Getty Images

Dobbin has turned now to a document from 24 August 2020. She points directly to a paragraph outlining an initial timeline on whether a “lessons learned inquiry” would be needed.

She asks Johnson to confirm if this ever took place - which it did not.

“I think the lessons learned were pretty obvious,” Johnson says, describing the grading system they came up with as “not suitable”.

The document itself sets out the initial insights into what went wrong, demonstrating as Dobbin says, “that there were bigger lessons to learn in terms of fairness towards children”.

In response, Johnsons simply replies, “that was obvious” and he tells Dobbin he is sure the government will not go down this same route again.

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Young people whose exams were cancelled get a front row seat to Johnson's defencepublished at 11:11 BST

11:11 BST

Nabiha Ahmed
Reporting from the inquiry

"Bitterly disappointing" is how Johnson describes the cancellation of GCSE and A Level exams in the summer of 2020.

Among those in the front row of the public gallery are young people who - like me - may very well have been affected by this decision.

As a reminder, Johnson cancelled the A-level exams for thousands of students like me. GCSEs were the highest qualification under many of our belts when we set off to work, university, and beyond.

Hearing him speak to the inquiry about the matter almost feels like he's announcing it all over again for the first time. I imagine others feel the same.

Still on exams, Dobbin points out that there were a "series of U-turns... on the part of Sir Gavin Williamson".

Johnson responds that the decision to go back to centrally assessed results was made on 17 August 2020 - "which is not that long after the results have started to come out".

"Everybody can remember it... there was a period in which a lot of young people, a lot of kids were feeling very disheartened by getting grades they didn't feel they deserved," he says.

He says it was clear from the data and teachers' remarks that they were probably right, "so we had to fix it".

Johnson adds that he isn't sure how long it was between realising that and deciding to scrap it.

Dobbin says: "The whole thing was a disaster, wasn't it?"

Johnson responds: "If you mean was Covid a disaster? Yes. Was the loss of education a disaster? Yes. Was the loss of exams a disaster? Yes. Was the disappointment, anger, frustration of a large number of kids - the additional frustration - a disaster? Yes it was.

"But it has to be seen in the context of us trying to deal with a much, much bigger disaster," he says - the loss of learning and exams.

He says it was not easy to come up with a substitute system.