So one of my main policies as your next mayor of London is education first.

It's something that's really important to me is the education of our children and making sure that we prioritize that.

And that's why I was a bit alarmed this week to find out that 22% of secondary school students went missing this week. And that's actually up from 17%

the previous month. And that was all because of fears of COVID. And what's happening in the

schools is that three quarters of them have now sent students home, all because they fear the COVID transmission.

And my daughter's 16,

and it's something they're constantly dealing with

at her school.

But the problem is this, is that none of this is based on science.

And yet it's got all of the teachers

and all of the schools stressed out and now under capacity because they're sending

students home that are not sick. And when they've gone ahead and tested the students that

were sent home, and again, you're told to self-isolate if you've had contact with someone who's tested

positive, but you've got to self-isolate for 14 days. But it turns out that only 0.2% of those students sent home

actually contracted the virus.

Point two percent.

So you're disrupting an entire quarter

of the student population,

and teachers go along with that for no reason, basically,

because none of these students are positive. And yet we have this

bad science. And again, this disproportionate response to the virus that has these arbitrary

rules that say, if one of the students test positive, then everyone has to go home for 14 days.

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