Mercy Muroki: 'That last school bell in March last year was not music to the ears of thousands of vulnerable children. It was a death knell for the most at-risk'

It emerged yesterday that the brutal murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was just one of 223 child deaths reported by social services as serious incidents linked to abuse or neglect, between April 2020 and March 2021.

Labinjo-Hughes' endured a campaign of torture and starvation by his monster Dad and Stepmum during the first few months of lockdown – while schools were shut – and they've now been locked up.

This death rate of abused children is a near 20% increase on the year before.There has also been a sharp rise in overall serious incidents involving children as reported by local authorities – again, a near 20% increase on the year before the pandemic.

In the first half of 2020 alone, the number of serious incidents MORE than doubled on the same period the year before. Coincidence? I think not.

The reality is, that last school bell in March last year was not music to the ears of thousands of vulnerable children. In fact, it was a death knell for the most at risk children, who were forgotten by a government that put covid models over kids.

And that's not just my view. Prof. Lucy Easthope is the country's leading expert on recovering from disaster. At the beginning of the pandemic, she was tasked with advising the government on how to plan for the crisis.

But despite pandemic planning being her 'bread and butter', she says her plans weren't followed.

She says this about school closures "we told the government children would die... and we were completely ignored" Children's Commissioner Rachel de Souza and her predecessor warned the same thing.

Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, has only a few days ago reiterated that by closing schools, we make the minority of children LESS safe.

We've been told throughout this pandemic we are keeping the public safe, and protecting the vulnerable. What about vulnerable children?

So what's the Department of Education's response to these fiigures – they said, and I quote "Any increase in serious incidents is of concern and we have clear processes to report and review them" Of concern?

The rising cases of torture and abuse of children isn't 'of concern' to me, it horrifies me, it makes me sick to my stomach.

Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, has refused to rule out school closures next term. We know from data from the Centre for Social Justic that last time schools were closed, 100,000 children failed to return to schools.

The lost children of lockdown. We can't lock children up with their abusers.

We can't stop teachers from carrying out their duty of care.Mass school closures cannot happen again for the sake of Covid. It's simply not worth it.More children will suffer and children will die.