Why as a Peterborough parent I’m not sending my five-year-old back to school

We have a prime minister who is subject to endless speculation about the number of children he’s fathered.

So I’m afraid I have great reservations about trusting my children’s education, much less their safety, to him.

The plan to send some primary children back to school on June 1 is yet another example of the shameful Government mishandling of this terrible pandemic.

My son is in reception class, one of the year groups selected to go back first.

He enjoys school, he misses his friends, and me and Mrs T are determined he and his elder sister will get the best possible education.

But he ain’t going nowhere on June 1.

He isn’t a lab rat for the scientists and politicians.

I want to get back to something approaching normal as soon as possible and that, of course, involves children going back to school.

But this is muddled thinking, or worse, a callous experiment to see what happens. Nothing the Government has said or done has convinced me a return to school is safe.

Why would you send five-year-olds back first? Everybody knows they are less likely to obey social distancing and less likely to have the highest hygiene standards.

And why is it so vital they go back with just over seven weeks left of school this year anyway?

Schoolboy T is a bright lad but he isn’t sitting his A levels just yet. Much of what reception class do (particularly towards the end of term) is play. Learning through play, but play nonetheless.

Nothing wrong with that, it’s a great technique to introduce learning, but those seven weeks are not make or break for five-year-olds.

If he lived in some Scandinavian countries he wouldn’t have even started school yet.

Thankfully, in most cases, this terrible virus seems not to affect children too badly, but where’s the evidence that our beloved little germ factories don’t spread it?

And please, please, don’t say the Government is following the science!

Teachers are understandably concerned about the health and safety of themselves and their pupils.

My sister is a teacher and has been working in school throughout lockdown, mixing with children of key workers. Yet she cannot see her own grandchildren. If the risk of transmission to and from children is so low why is this the case?

Meanwhile, the Government babbles on about putting five-year-olds in a ‘bubble’.

Even home-schooled five-year-olds know what happens to bubbles – they burst.