What is the point locking down if schools are still open?
If you look at the effect of the first lockdown and its impact on the R rate, maybe they think they don't "need" to close schools or churches? In March they got the R rate down from ~3 to 0.7, and we're not quite as bad off this time so don't need to impose all of those restrictions. From their latest evidence they think at worst we're at an R rate of 1.8, so I guess if you run the numbers it might say you can reduce things by half as much as we did in March while still crushing the virus?
The biggest flaw with that is it seems pretty clear from this "circuit breaker" that people aren't prepared to go all in like they were in March, so the effects of each individual restriction is diluted.
Even if you accept the premise that things will work as they did in March, wouldn't reducing the spread more sharply and quickly still be in everyone's best interests? Sure, maybe we don't "need" to close schools or churches, but if they're going to be reviewing this after 4 weeks, wouldn't it increase our chances of being in a good enough position by that point?
Their argument for schools at this point seems to boil down to "schools are an escape for children in difficult homes, we can't cut off that lifeline". I'll admit this is a bit of a blind spot for me. Do we really have that many children in that precarious a situation? If it was a big chunk then maybe I would understand the priorities, but I never thought the situation was that grave.