Hundreds of teachers with long Covid are suing the Department for Education (DfE) over its handling of the pandemic within schools, i can reveal.
More than 120 teachers are part of the joint legal action over alleged failures to protect teachers working in schools during the pandemic and a lack of support for those who say they have been left disabled and unable to work as a result of contracting the disease.
The legal challenge – which claims policy failures led to teachers becoming infected in schools – aims to secure income protection for education staff with long Covid, disability rights and compensation for lost livelihoods. If successful, the Government could face a multi-million pound compensation bill.
Teachers across England and Wales told i they feel they were “abandoned” by the government during the Covid crisis, and claim their lives and careers have been left “shattered” without financial support or recognition.
“We’ve had our careers devastated by it, our lives completely changed, turned upside down, and we’ve just been hung out to dry,” said Emily Mason, a former teacher and founder of Long Covid Educators for Justice (LCEJ), which instigated the case.
“During the pandemic it was ‘keep schools open, keep children in education, let families carry on working’ with little regard for teachers’ safety,” she said. “We stepped up and did what we could during the pandemic to help society and now in the time we need it most, when our lives have been absolutely shattered, there is no support. We’ve been abandoned.”
Many of those diagnosed with long Covid said they have had to leave work, claim early pensions or battle for benefits. The disease, defined as symptoms that persist for more than 12 weeks following a Covid infection, is a chronic condition that affects about two million people in the UK. Symptoms include extreme fatigue, breathlessness, joint pain and memory loss.
Phillip Gower, a partner at Redkite Solicitors, which is representing the claimants, said he believed the number of teachers pursuing damages could double.
He said: “The more I look into it, it’s very clear that [teachers] were sent back to schools at a time when it was unsafe to do so, without proper regard to their well-being and health, and at a time when there was an increasing number of Covid infections in schools.
“It’s not surprising a lot of them got long Covid.”
Mr Gower has successfully represented similar claims on behalf of healthcare workers and family members of Covid-related fatalities. He said that, hypothetically, a teacher in their 40s with long Covid who can no longer work – losing a salary of £30,000 a year over the next two decades – could be due £600,000 in compensation for lost earnings.
“There’s potential for the claims, if successful, and there are 100 of them, to run into the millions,” he said.
The teachers involved in the action claim that the guidance for schools in 2020 and beyond was “patchy, vague and unpredictable” and left schools having to determine their own measures to protect staff and students.
They argue that schools were slow to close as Covid began its rampage and then fast to reopen as infections soared; staff were advised not to wear face masks at the height of the pandemic and sick primary school children were not required to take tests when cases were at their peak.
Ms Mason, 36, said: “There was at first no guidance, and then when it did start coming through, it was left up to the interpretation of schools and it wasn’t enough to support headteachers to effectively keep staff safe.
“Very little was put in place to protect workers who would be around the main vectors of the disease for six plus hours a day.
“We were told to keep our classroom doors closed, windows open, and socially distance. At the time, I was working in a Victorian classroom, the windows opened halfway, and I had 34 children facing me.”
During the pandemic, Covid infection among teachers was 1.9 times higher than the general population.
The rates of long Covid among teachers are similarly high. According to the Office for National Statistics, education staff and social care workers tied as the occupations with the greatest incidences of the illness.
DfE workforce data shows that, in 2020, teacher sickness absences increased by 56 per cent.
Ms Mason caught Covid three times at her school, but has suffered with long Covid since her first infection in March 2020. She said the disease had irrevocably altered her life, leaving her bedbound.
As with other sufferers, she experiences a debilitating range of ailments including chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia (widespread pain) and brain fog.
Before Covid, she was an “active mum” and went paddle boarding with her children, took them to yoga sessions in the park and regularly went to the gym. Now, she cannot walk her children to school and said that her husband, a police officer, is at “breaking point” under the weight of trying to do the job of two parents.
“We both worked through the pandemic,” she said. “We were there for society. We did as the government asked of us – and now, when we are at crisis moment, there is nothing to help us. We’re down to one income in a cost of living crisis.”
Long Covid is not classified as an industrial disease (a chronic ailment caused by work) or a disability, so patients are unable to claim certain benefits or other financial support. Some have reported being rejected from ill health retirement due to the unproven assertion that they may recover in the future.
The NASUWT union has been calling for long Covid to be legally recognised as a disability under the Equality Act 2010 in order to enable patients to claim Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and other benefits. A “Joint Protocol” created by a number of unions calls for policies such as phased returns to work, disability leave and a minimum of one year of full pay for those forced to be off work with the condition.
‘Long Covid has stolen my life – and we’ve just been dismissed’
Paul Robertson was head of an autistic unit in a comprehensive school when the pandemic hit. As a special school, they were not allowed to close at any point. The guidance, he says, was “completely inadequate” and “changed on a daily basis”.
“Often what we saw on the daily briefings was the first indication that the government had changed its rules, and therefore there was a massive panic that evening to try to work out what we had to do next.”
After catching Covid in December 2020, Mr Robertson, 59, never returned to work. He said he spent a year and a half unable to get out of bed.
He now suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), severe allergies, excruciating joint pain, sleep disruption and small fibre neuropathy – which he described as “a burning sensation like having ants crawling under your skin all the time”.
His life before and after contracting Covid is “chalk and cheese”, he said. “I’m a PE teacher by training – I was a really fit guy, cycling 200 miles a week before Covid – and now nothing. I can’t express how much of a complete mindf*** that is. Long Covid has stolen my life.”
As well as suffering a loss of earnings, Mr Robertson has been rejected for both ill health pension and PIP benefits and has instead taken early retirement – meaning he loses out on £8,000-9,000 a year on his employer pension. The sum total of the benefits he does receive from Employment and Allowance Support is £28 every fortnight.
“I’m 59. I’ve paid my dues, I’ve worked for the whole of my time, and when I needed support from the system, it wasn’t forthcoming,” he said.
As a substitute teacher, Margaret McAtamney only received sick pay for a couple of months when she caught Covid in March 2020, which later became long Covid. “It’s a big issue for supply teachers – because we’re not permanently employed, the school can wash its hands of you,” Ms McAtamney, 52, said.
“Someone else took my job within a week. So I’ve been fighting and fighting for sickness benefit. I fought for PIP for about two years.”
The benefits she has secured amount to about £700 a month, which she said is not enough to cover her bills. The first “horrific” year she ransacked her savings and borrowed from friends to stay in her home. She now “scrapes by each month” – helped by the little she makes selling home-made jewellery – but her world has shrunk. Each penny is accounted for; there is nothing left for quality groceries, dinners out, holidays, clothes or medical treatments.
Katy Miller, a former teacher who has been severely unwell since 2022, said: “I hope the legal case will achieve some kind of justice for everyone who kept schools open and have now been abandoned by the DfE.”
The Department for Education said it would respond to the findings of the Covid-19 Inquiry when they are available.