Would you send your bundle of joy into harm’s way? Of course not. The instinct of a parent is to protect your child at all costs even if that means sacrificing your own life in the process. So why on Earth does our increasingly authoritarian government think that it can open schools in the middle of a pandemic and assume that parents would rush off their children to school?

Simple, actually. Our department of education is obsessed with one thing only – completing the academic year at all costs, and that means covering the curriculum (even if it means “trimming” it down somewhat) and administering the final examinations.

In the rush to reopen, our education department officials flounder badly in full view of a nervous public. Notice how the dates for reopening have been changed four times depending on which official you spoke to on which day of the week. This partly reflects the ineptitude of the department and partly their own uncertainties about when it would be safe to return. ..