The government’s plan to reopen schools needs to account for a second wave of coronavirus

Editorial: The time may come when another cohort of pupils is faced with massive disruption to their lives as well as their life chances

Emerging from his recent seclusion, which lasted, conveniently enough, for virtually the entire period of the exam results fiasco, the prime minister announces that it is “vitally important” that children get back to the classrooms.

He is right about that, and fortunate too that parents do not have to rely on his word alone to steer their decisions. The chief medical officers across the UK have advised a return to something like normality in education, and families in England have the additional reassuring precedent of the restoration of conventional schooling in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and an earlier experiment in opening up in Wales in June and July.

That much, then, is clear. With various precautionary measures such as “year group bubbles”, masks (in Scotland for the over 12s) and social distancing, the schools are returning to normal, in a broadly safe environment and with the necessary support of most school staff. With luck or, rather, a display of official competence hitherto lacking, there ought not to be a repeat of this year’s abandonment of exams and all that followed from that.