An unlikely ally in the fight against wearing face masks by school children has emerged. Tim Henman, former British professional tennis player—the one who never won Wimbledon—co-signed a letter in March to Gavin Williamson, receiving less than complimentary comments in the process, asking for these unnecessary appendages to be dropped in schools. He has re-emerged with an interview in The Daily Telegraph claiming that the continued wearing of face masks will be damaging to children. In The Daily Telegraph of 6 May, Dr Yvonne Wren—director of the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit—explains precisely how damaging face masks are for children’s education preventing, as they do, reading lip movements on which they rely to learn and communicate. Henman is also promoting a campaign to ensure that sport, which has largely disappeared from the curriculum during the pandemic, is reinstated. Good for Tim, let us hope this is one campaign he can win.
Many teachers agree with dropping face masks and one headteacher, David Perks, took an especially strong stance against them in East London but he has been forced to back down under ‘immense pressure’ from the school governors and the government. Meantime, the teaching unions have vacillated. The GMB did say that wearing face masks by both teachers and pupils should be voluntary. The NASUWT has been equally sensible and questions the wearing of face masks and points to the difficulties teachers are having implementing aspects of pandemic panic such as social distancing. The National Education Union Joint General Secretary Kevin Courtney, originally stated that we must rid schools of masks but the union, perversely, advocated that people should not be prevented from wearing face masks if they are vulnerable and wish to do so. Surely, if they are vulnerable they would be better advised to stay at home—as advocated by the NASUWT—if the pandemic persists since wearing face masks is a complete waste of time with no evidence to support their use. If they simply wish to wear a face mask for no good reason, they should be sent home to think again, teacher and pupil alike. But in a perfect example of a volte face mask situation, all the unions involved in school education—and it is an impressive array—signed a joint letter in early May urging the government to keep face masks for pupils until the end of June.
It is not clear what has led to this sudden outburst of unity between very disparate unions. It is certainly not the welfare of school children. If it is the welfare of their staff, which seems likely, then they are wasting their time; masks do not work and, to reiterate, if someone is genuinely vulnerable or has tested positive for COVID-19, then they should be advised to stay at home. Children have suffered disproportionately and unnecessarily throughout the pandemic. Disproportionately as they have been deprived of genuine contact with friends and family, they have had their formative years irreversibly disrupted. Millions have missed out on education and to add insult to that injury, many have been robbed of a future. The most galling thing is that, as evident in the earliest stages of the pandemic, if children contract COVID-19, it is generally mild and evidence that they spread COVID-19 is not strong. In breaking news it appears that Boris Johnson may ask for masks in the classroom to be scrapped on Monday 10 May. We will see. There was only ever one correct course of action and that was never to have forced children to wear face masks at school. If Boris refuses to scrap them, I suggest we now have a hill to die on, Henman Hill.
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