Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

I understand the arguments for keeping schools open.
But why are we pretending that the measures required to make them safe have been taken?
That school staff won't die?
That outbreaks in schools won't spread into the community?
Please read and RT. Thanks
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Not a penny has been allocated by the government for the refurbishments required to make schools safe.
£500m was given to restaurants.
Billions to corporations in opaque, untendered contracts.
But NOTHING for schools.
questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questi…

There was nothing very complicated about it.
The government could have spent the summer holidays carrying out an emergency programme of school works: ventilation systems, windows that open, Nightingale classrooms etc.
It did nothing.
Literally nothing.

Then schools reopened, and, just as predicted, Covid cases surged again - especially among secondary school children.
It wasn't just foreseeable. It was foreseen.
It looks to me like culpable negligence.

Why didn't schools carry out the works themselves?
For a simple reason. They have no money.
Even before the pandemic, their budgets were maxed out. But covid introduced extra running costs, which have already put them under great financial strain. There's nothing left for refurbs

So when the government says, with Marie-Antoinette callousness, "schools should use their existing resources", they could reasonably reply "what resources?".

I can't help entertaining the horrible suspicion that Tory MPs couldn't give a damn, because the private schools they and their chums use have much more space and money than state schools have, and can therefore adapt more easily.

For schools, please also read FE colleges and other educational settings. The infection rate among older children and young adults is higher than in any other segment. School and college staff, who are instructed not to wear facemasks in the classroom, confront unacceptable risks

It is simply unacceptable that teachers and other staff should be treated as necessary sacrifices, or that schools should stay open without a massive, emergency refurbishment programme to make them safe.
And I say this as a parent who dreads the prospect of them closing again.

Please forgive me for filling up your timelines with so many tweets on this issue. But I feel a great wrong is being done here, with repercussions for us all, yet there's barely a squeak about it in the media.