An unpopular opinion

Years of education are not fungible: if a person misses a year of education when they are, say, 6 then they can't really make it up when you are 8, because 6-year-olds and 8-year-olds are hugely different. This disadvantage generally goes down with age.

So if CV19 means that children – especially young children – miss significant amounts of education, the consequences will be severe for them, and some of those consequences will last the whole of their lives.

The consequences of missing formal education will also directly increase inequality: well-off and/or well-educated parents are in a much better position to make up the educational deficit than poor and/or poorly-educated parents. So children of poor or poorly-educated parents will suffer the worst.

So it is at least possible that formal education should restart, even if it will worsen the short-term impact of CV19. I am not sure that it should restart, but it's a possibility which needs to be assessed.

If only our glorious leaders would stop lying to us then this is a decision that we might be able to take based on real information. But of course they will jot do that: lying is all they know.