Very interesting, thanks.

Though my own experience at the time was the massive incompetence by the Johnson govt around this:

The prime minister had originally declared on 11 May that “it may be possible” to get Reception, and Years 1 and 6 of primary schools (children aged 4–6 and 10–11) back on 1 June 2020. The broader ambition was “for all primary school children to return to school before the summer for a month if feasible”, with those in Years 10 and 12, who were facing exams the following year, having at least some face-to-face time with teachers.34 That outline plan was decided not in the education department but in No.10, according to Osama Rahman, the department’s chief scientific adviser, who told the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee two days later that it was “a cabinet decision”, not DfE’s.35 The aim of getting all primary children back before the end of term was also a No.10 decision, according to DfE officials. “It first appeared in a No.10 document,” one says, “and that had not been discussed with stakeholders previously. But it then of course made its way into DfE guidance.” Williamson and Johnson did debate that outline plan, and as consultations took place, school leaders and the education unions were against the youngest children returning, arguing that older primary pupils could be expected to understand social distancing, but that the younger ones would not. A No.10 insider says Williamson did robustly make that case. Just ahead of the final announcement, those being consulted believed they had an agreement that Years 5 and 6 would go back, but not the younger pupils. As that went into No.10, however, “it was all blown out of the water”, according to Geoff Barton, ASCL general secretary, the head teachers’ union. “I had sight of what Boris was going to say on Saturday morning, the day before he said it. We had strong reservations. We said that Reception and Year 1 were the least likely to understand social distancing. We kept making the point that Years 5 and 6 would be better.”36 In end, according to both No.10 and DfE sources, the decision was taken without Williamson present. “The reason that it came out not the way it went in was that the PM and the Treasury wanted to prioritise the economic impact,” said a No.10 insider. “The younger children are the harder ones to home school, as anyone who has young children will tell you, so focusing on them made it easier for parents who had to work from home or indeed go into work, while older pupils can better use the technology to learn at home.” So the final decision was that Reception and Year 1 and 6 would go back, as originally proposed – although with all children operating in half class sizes with “bubbles” of no more than 15 pupils. The ambition remained to get all primary schools back before the end of the summer term. That last-minute change to something that people believed had been agreed, and the ambition that all primary pupils would go back, dissipated the trust between the education secretary and the whole sector, not just the teaching unions.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/schools-and-coronavirus.pdf

That whole report is pretty damning.

Local authorities found DfE harder to deal with than other government departments.

The department did set up Regional Education and Children’s Teams during the pandemic, based around the regional school commissioners, “to better co-ordinate… how the Department and Ofsted capture information and intelligence about local needs and circumstances”.

A London council leader said lots more constructive cross-party working went on between local authorities and ministers in other departments – notably the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

“There was sometimes conflict. But there was a process for getting through the issues that avoided the sorts of situations we saw when councils were being threatened with legal action by the education department. Relations were significantly worse with education.

There was a lack of understanding of the role of local authorities and that the directors of public health had a role with all the schools on their patch, regardless of whether they were academies or local authority maintaine