Have you seen anything like it? Something from a John Wyndham horror story?

A barred gate is half opened. Just inside stand two adults in full length protective clothing and headgear looking like something from a science fiction film. A five year old boy dressed in ordinary clothes stands in front of them. One of the two adults holds a gun to the boy’s head. He is then told to walk to another adult likewise clad whilst holding a hoop round his waist. As he walks slowly forward he is passed to another adult also wearing full protective clothing who escorts him to the door of the building.

No, it is not a scene from a horror movie, it is a small boy trying to get into his school. Ludicrous. Are small children that dangerous? Are they going to pass a deadly disease by just approaching someone? If it was not so serious it would be ridiculous, small children in ordinary clothes and adults in space age protective clothing. Has anyone stopped to think the effect it might have on young children presented with this scenario?

Fortunately of course children are resilient and most have taken it in their stride, the lucky ones that is, who have even been allowed to approach their school.

Get real for a moment. It seems pretty clear that children do not catch coronavirus very easily and if they do, not very badly. Ordinary flu is much more likely to kill them. Further they seem very bad at trying to pass it on to others. Now they can go shopping at Primark, they can go to a crowded beach, they can go on a protest march with their parents (where they may meet one of their teachers) so why on earth can they not go to school?

Will teachers and officials and most of all politically motivated union officials stop this nonsense. Get the teachers back in school teaching the children, all of them. Officials stop putting obstacles in the way and start putting the effort into helping to get schools running again. And this does mean ditching this two metres rule. By all means keep the good hygiene procedures that we have all adopted, or the majority of us that is. The children have to get back to school unless we want to end up with an uneducated, unstable and unemployable generation.

Many teachers are only too anxious to get back to their job, but also there are too many who seem not to be. It is time to stop these pantomime antics or find something else to do. And certainly officials and administrators need to put all their efforts into assisting in getting every child back to school. There will be a relatively small number of teachers who are highly vulnerable and also an even fewer number of children, and of course they need to be looked after and arrangements made..

I am not going to go into the effects all this is having on parents, their finances or indeed the economy as a whole. Simply the message is get the schools working for all pupils. NOW.

That is all I am going to blog today.