Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “Today’s testimony confirms what we said at the time, the chaos and confusion at the heart of government during the pandemic led to bad decision making.

“Dogmatic thinking at the highest level of government and a refusal to properly engage with the emerging scientific evidence quite clearly caused harm. It is good to see a minister acknowledging that many mistakes were made, although what is far more important is that genuine lessons are now learned so that this does not happen again in the future.”