The government’s “refusal” to make contingency plans for schools and exams in summer 2020 is the “most unforgivable aspect” of its handling of education amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report has suggested. Lessons regarding school closures and examinations from the first lockdown were “not learnt,” leading to a case of “pause, rewind, repeat,” a paper by the Institute for Government (IfG) found. Coming ahead of this month’s A-level and GCSE results, the report, entitled “Schools And Coronavirus: The government’s Handling Of Education During The Pandemic,” describes the period following the March 2020 closure of England’s schools announced by the prime minister as “easily the most disruptive period in children’s education since at least the start of the Second World War.” It states: “Its most important conclusion is that the most unforgivable aspect of what happened is not just the failure to make contingency plans in the summer of 2020 …