So am I. I couldn’t help thinking that there must be some logic I’m missing. So pulled together more data. The table below uses data the excellent London Datastore to see if there was any discernible pattern.

Short story. I still haven’t found one.

If you want to look for yourself the table below is sortable (there’s a little black sort button on each column about half-way up on the right-hand side of each header). You can sort by multiple columns by holding ‘shift’ as you click. The size of the table does make it a bit unwieldy on phones, sorry.

I have tried to explore a few different explanations. The first is the good old Inner/Outer London split. You are a bit more likely to be in an open borough if you are inner London.

I looked at population density and school age children to see if this could offer any explanation. This might be the most logical reason for openings that looks odd, since the boroughs vary enormously in size, which might result in decisions that there odd at first sight, but made sense when looking at the numbers. Again, I couldn’t see any pattern here. I did explore by trying to look at the number of schools and how that might affect things. Again, this produced no obvious answers, although that might be skewed by things like cross-border and private schools.

I also wondered about educational need. Given the government’s repeated statements of the importance of keeping children in education it’s possible factors related to educational need might have relevance. I used English proficiency or children looked after as imperfect proxies for these but, once again, there was no obvious link.

The other possibility is that the government have been looking at trends, but given their inability to spot and act on nationally rising rates during the last national lockdown I suspect it’s unlikely they can do this on a borough level.

I have tried various combinations of factors and other data, but not managed to come up with anything. It is possible, of course, that the Department for Education is using a weighted combination that I’ve not come close to. I like to think that there is some logic to it. But unless and until the criteria used are published it’s very easy to conclude the reasoning behind the decisions is not entirely based in controlling the virus.

Borough	Status	Inner/Outer London	Case rate	Control	Primary schools	Population density (per hectare) 2017	Proportion of population aged 0-15, 2015	% of pupils whose first language is not English (2015)	Rates of Children Looked After (2016)	GLA Population Estimate 2017
Barnet	Closed	Outer	730	Con	91	44.9	21.1	46.0	35	389,600
Croydon	Closed	Outer	780	Lab	86	44.7	22	36.7	86	386,500
Ealing	Closed	Outer	623	Lab	68	63.3	21.4	43.6	46	351,600
Enfield	Closed	Outer	949	Lab	68	41.2	22.8	55.3	43	333,000
Brent	Closed	Outer	632	Lab	60	76.8	20.9	37.6	45	332,100
Bromley	Closed	Outer	825	Con	77	21.8	19.9	38.9	40	327,900
Redbridge	Closed	Outer	1,027	Lab	52	53.9	22.8	66.5	28	304,200
Hillingdon	Closed	Outer	743	Con	69	26.0	21.3	29.6	49	301,000
Greenwich	Open	Outer	705	Lab	63	59.2	21.9	44.1	78	280,100
Waltham Forest	Closed	Outer	857	Lab	51	71.2	21.8	62.4	43	276,200
Hounslow	Closed	Outer	708	Lab	53	49.0	21.1	50.6	45	274,200
Havering	Closed	Outer	1,095	Con (council NOC)	61	22.6	19.3	38.9	42	254,300
Harrow	Open	Outer	726	Lab	42	50.0	20.5	57.6	32	252,300
Bexley	Closed	Outer	1,006	Con	57	40.3	20.6	32.6	46	244,300
Barking and Dagenham	Closed	Outer	950	Lab	44	57.9	27.2	41.7	69	209,000
Merton	Closed	Outer	776	Lab	44	55.3	20.6	34.2	35	208,100
Sutton	Closed	Outer	747	LD	40	46.2	20.7	34.3	50	202,600
Richmond upon Thames	Closed	Outer	593	LD	45	34.4	20.7	53.5	26	197,300
Kingston upon Thames	Open	Outer	595	LD	36	47.1	19.6	39.3	30	175,400
Newham	Closed	Inner	894	Lab	66	94.7	22.7	58.8	42	342,900
Lambeth	Open	Inner	696	Lab	60	122.7	17.6	39.1	73	328,900
Wandsworth	Closed	Inner	685	Con	61	93.7	17.8	50.8	41	321,000
Southwark	Closed	Inner	673	Lab	74	108.9	18.6	29.8	75	314,300
Tower Hamlets	Closed	Inner	917	Lab	70	153.7	20.1	51.1	47	304,000
Lewisham	Open	Inner	696	Lab	63	86.3	20.6	40.9	69	303,400
Haringey	Open	Inner	785	Lab	64	93.9	20	48.0	67	278,000
Hackney	Open	Inner	751	Lab	58	144.0	20.7	44.2	53	274,300
Camden	Open	Inner	481	Lab	42	111.3	17.3	25.2	41	242,500
Westminster	Closed	Inner	476	Con	40	112.7	15.9	52.6	39	242,100
Islington	Open	Inner	593	Lab	46	155.6	15.9	57.6	88	231,200
Hammersmith and Fulham	Closed	Inner	587	Lab	37	113.0	17.4	48.9	58	185,300
Kensington and Chelsea	Closed	Inner	476	Con	27	131.1	16.4	45.8	37	159,000