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That was pretty small fry all things considered, and not really a major imposition - after all, in the case of schools in particular they are a governmental institution, so imposing requirements there hardly seems like a grievous blow to personal liberty.
It's a bit worse than a footnote. Schooling is obligatory. You can't avoid having your children wearing a degrading symbol of submission to unjust authority (and one that increasingly looks like it harms your health) simply by not interacting with the schooling system because that is also illegal.
Further, it's part of a wider pattern that would need a whole book to comprehensively document. But to try to keep things as brief as possible, covid-sceptic backbencher MPs from the governing party repeatedly asked to be provided with cost-benefit analyses for restrictions. These were not provided, generally on the basis that it would be too complicated to provide a cost-benefit analysis (Effectively admitting they have no utilitarian justification for restrictions as they never bothered doing the work). On rare cases where cost-benefit analysis was done, such as with vaccinating children, if the numbers went against what the government wanted to do anyway the relevant institutions were overruled.
A world in which advocates of lockdowns backed them on the basis of a utilitarian calculation where personal liberties fell on the losing side looks very different than the one we actually got. For instance, by actually having an argument to present in favour of their policies, advocates of lockdowns would have spent less time and funding on slandering their opponents as substitute. I would still find them disagreeable, as abandoning personal liberties have huge second and third order effects that make the world more dangerous, but it would at least be comprehensible, and a far better debate than was actually had. However, utilitarian and cost-benefit analysis is not the argument that supporters of lockdowns advanced. Cost-benefit analysis was generally done by sceptics to try to understand or even steelman government decision making in the absence of them providing their own reasoning. That's what I did back in March-May 2020, and it was only when I realised that reasoning from the government was not forthcoming because it didn't exist that I went full anti-lockdown.
Decision-making during covid can't be comprehended through a lens of people making the least bad decisions possible. Rather, only by identifying an ideological commitment to restrictions for the sake of restrictions do the restrictions we got make any sense.
Edit for more considerations:
Regretfully committing human rights violations in a desperate effort to stop covid would resemble the ideas of proportionality such as in the Siracusa principles: Doing the absolute least violation of human rights possible to avert the bad outcome. To give examples:
And
This is not what we saw with the response to covid in the UK. At every level restrictions that were absent any evidence of effectiveness were imposed, which immediately violates the idea of doing the least bad thing possible. Even a single restriction existing for a vapid reason like "Sturgeon did it" would sink any claim of proportionality, but the number of restrictions that fit that category are quite extensive. To list some more examples:
Reintroduction of masks in winter 2021, regarded to be Boris retaliating against the general public for the crime of noticing partygate by some of his own backbenchers.
Masks in general, considering they lacked evidence of efficacy, still lack evidence of efficacy, and thus can never be a proportional violation of civil liberties.
Matter of public record that including children in rule of six had no rationale but was done anyway. It's likely that the entire rule of six thing has no rationale - inside baseball is that it is "six" because Gove thought it sounded better for sloganing than "eight".
Lack of policy to deal with covid tests that are determined to be false-positives following a more reliable PCR test, instead continuing to make children isolate despite not having covid, because doing so would be contradicting earlier statements about whether false-positives are a thing.
General lack of evidence that outdoor spread is a significant source of covid transmission compared to indoor spread, despite restrictions excessively targetting outdoor spread and arguably encouraging indoor spread.
That vaccines don't work to prevent transmission, which was at best a wild assumption made without evidence and then used to coerce people into being vaccinated against their judgement. And then to bring in vaccine mandates.
That children are harmed less by covid but harmed more by many restrictions, repeatedly ignored, violates proportionality
Like I said, needs a book to go through all of these.
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"Government infringes personally liberty at government institutions" seems like a central example of "grievous blow to personal liberty", no?
The fact that the government also infringed the same liberties elsewhere (private businesses, not to mention "literally everywhere that isn't your own house") does not make it better!
Well not really, because it's their institution it hardly seems like a blow against liberty to impose rules on what is their own property. The point is that is hardly undermines the overall posture and messaging of the British government throughout the pandemic, which absolutely recognised the gravity of the decision being taken.
"L'etat, c'est nous" -- government property is your property.
Would a government policy saying that ethnic Irish aren't allowed in government buildings not seem like a major imposition on personal liberty to you?
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