Boris Johnson’s risky timeline for schools reopening

If there’s one lesson you’d think Boris Johnson might have learned from his handling of the pandemic so far, it would surely be that it is too risky to set a date by which things will start returning to normal. And yet this evening the Prime Minister found himself talking about a date for schools returning, despite the timetable repeatedly slipping. Of course – as Johnson himself made clear at the Downing Street coronavirus briefing – 8 March is the earliest by which schools might start to return, rather than his deadline for anything happening.

Johnson was asked whether he was once again being too optimistic by talking about this date, but said that ‘opening schools is a huge priority for us all’. He was also much clearer about why schools were closed, saying at the start of the briefing:

‘The problem is not that schools are unsafe – teachers and headteachers have worked heroically to make sure that they are safe, that they are Covid secure.